Posted on 05/25/2004 7:10:09 AM PDT by antiRepublicrat
Microsoft agreed to pay Norway's Opera Software $12.75 million to head off a threatened lawsuit over code that made some Web pages on MSN look bad in certain versions of Opera's Web browser, CNET News.com has learned.
Opera disclosed the payment last week in a terse press release that omitted other details, including the name of the settling party and the nature of the dispute.
But a source indicated that the payment came from Microsoft in order to close the books on a clash over obscure interoperability problems. On at least three separate occasions, Opera has accused Microsoft of deliberately breaking interoperability between its MSN Web portal and various versions of the Opera browser--charges that the software giant has repeatedly denied.
A Microsoft representative said the company does not comment on rumors.
Reached by phone, Opera executives refused to name the company involved in the settlement or describe the nature of the legal claims, citing a confidentiality agreement.
"We forwarded a few facts to a big international corporation and settled before we took legal action," Opera Chief Technology Officer Hakon Lie said Tuesday. "This resolves an issue very close to my heart."
The deal marks the latest in a string of settlements from Microsoft, which is seeking to simplify its business by clearing up potentially damaging legal claims. In the past year, the company has agreed to pay billions of dollars to wrap up litigation with Sun Microsystems, digital rights management developer InterTrust and Time Warner's Netscape Communications division, among others.
While the Opera payment is relatively tiny, it underscores ongoing ripple effects in the browser market that stem from the overwhelming dominance of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Having used its desktop operating system monopoly to help trounce its primary rival Netscape, Microsoft has effectively abandoned significant browser development efforts. That's left companies with negligible market share such as Opera and Netscape's Mozilla open-source project to lead innovation in the field.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.com ...
Your statement is contradictory. Since it is MS's site, they can do whatever the hell they want. There is no right to view a specific site with a particular browser.
Don't let any hatred you may have of MS cloud your judgment here. There's nobody's data being screwed up; there's no harm being done. MS simply wrote a site that won't display using a browser they don't like. That's the market. Opera users can go to other sites, and if those don't work, they need to get another browser.
If you cant see this was unethical then I am sorry for you and perhaps I am not the one letting my 'loyalty' to a certain set of software cloud my judgment.
Forget it. They're both property, and the rights of the owners need to be protected, and more importantly it doesn't need to be flat out given to US adversaries for free.
I thought this was going to be an article about singing and Microsoft's failure to support the arts. I'm so out of it I have never heard of the Opera browser.
Now go back and read your Constitution again.
Denying it's not even property is absurd. Socialistic, if you ask me.
BTTT
I take it you didn't read.
there latest cup hilder dosn't fit corectly? uh oh,...
Hey, i heard ford's bringing the capri back :)
the mark 4 was shite, good job ford never sold it in Britain tho,...
Mustangs still strong in America tho, i take it?
But if they so much as even "THINK" about makeing a new capri that is not Rear wheel drive, they'll be just waisting there time.
Why dosn't anybody make 'PROPER' car's anymore?
So for some reason MS decided this 'tiny blip in the browser market' was important enough to create a specific sheet for? and this sheet just happened to be really broken (this shee would not render right under IE/NS/MZ or any other browser, so in creating this sheet did they not even test it in IE?
Evidantly MS felt there was enough of a case to pay Opera off..
Mozilla is a whole package, browser, email, chat, composer, and it's also the base technology behind everything. Firefox is the browser component only. I'm actually not sure why Firefox is only .8, but it is a fully-functional stable browser. Maybe after Mozilla 1.7 is released (a stable point of the technology, which all other apps based on the tech will be built from), they'll finally take Firefox to 1.0.
Neither messes with your system, and if you want to install you can look in the documentation and find every file and registry key it wrote on installation in case an uninstall didn't go correctly.
I haven't used Opera in a while, but users I know love it.
Using underhanded tactics or lies to disparage another's product in the marketplace is subject to a civil suit.
By purposely breaking Opera on a site visited by millions, Microsoft tried to make those users with Opera think their browser was broken, casting doubt on the functionality and usability of that browser, which can be incentive for people to switch to a more "compatible" browser, such as IE. Such action is bad enough, but coming from a convicted monopolist known for anticompetitive behavior is that much worse.
Actually, it does. Opera is growing rapidly in the browser market, while Microsoft considers Netscape/Mozilla dead. But what they really fear is that Opera gets credibility as a good browser because Opera is poised to be the browser of choice on handheld devices -- a market that Microsoft desperately wants.
I have to hand it to you. If nothing else, you're consistent. When the argument goes against you, you claim speculation and conspiracy, ignoring the whole context, and go skulk.
People actually did a test of this. To make sure style sheets and HTML were correct, they used wget to pull an MSN page with style sheet, setting the user-agent in the HTTP header to identify itself as Opera, IE and Netscape. They then analyzed the files that the server returned. Here were the results:
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