An Important Choice to Make: Your Browser
Posted on 20. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey in News
So if you use Windows and you live in Europe, you’re about to make an important choice about which browser you will now use. Because since the European Union finds that Microsoft’s practices are anti-competitive, a Windows update for those with Internet Explorer will soon be deployed and will present users with alternative browser choices for them to install.
This is interesting to note, as someone commented on this blog not too long ago about seeing advertising for the Chrome browser in London. Users are going to be prompted to make a choice on a web browser in the next few weeks, and so now that piece of information comes to mind it doesn’t seem so shocking to me. What Google’s intentions are: they probably knew that Microsoft was going to be forced to push this Windows update and wanted to familiarize the public about the fact that they have their own browser.
And once one uses Chrome, they may realize that they’ve been missing out on something: an experience that is faster and more reliable than Internet Explorer. Of course, that could be said about most browsers other than IE.
As you can see from the screenshot above, the five most popular browsers will be shown in a random order, with other less popular ones being shown on another slide.
Overall, this does not help Microsoft in the browser wars. They are already losing a lot of users to Firefox and Chrome, but now this development is based not on the fact that their product isn’t very good, but because a government entity wants to make sure that people realize that they have a choice to use something that doesn’t automatically come with Windows. And there are several choices for them out there, more so than ever before.
So, have you been prompted with this message? What did you choose to do?
4 Responses to “An Important Choice to Make: Your Browser”
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Name tomrob
01. Mar, 2010
I’ve just wasted 20 mins trying to establish that this unexpected popup was not malicious. It has no indication of its source.
It did not show as an “application” in Task Manager and so I thought it suspicious.
The presentation in this way seems irresponsible to me and might well worry a lot more people who are rightly cautious when reacting to (unexpected) popups.
Google Will Avoid the Desktop Operating System Market « Bill Mullins’ Weblog – Tech Thoughts
01. Mar, 2010
[...] It’s been in the news the past couple of days that several companies have now filed antitrust complaints against Google. Some of the complaints have been generated by Microsoft, which has had its own legal issues with the recent European Union browser antitrust case that has forced those who have Windows installed on their computers and use Internet Explorer to be educated that they have a choice in what browser to use. [...]
Daniel Cawrey
02. Mar, 2010
That does seem concerning – a lot of people are going to be seeing this in the next few weeks, and they may think that they have malware on their system…
I’m surprised that there isn’t something that identifies this as an official Microsoft update.
StatCounter Shows Chrome Rise, IE Decline | thechromesource - Google Chrome and Chrome OS News and Resources
05. Oct, 2010
[...] While Internet Explorer continues to dominate because of its stature in large organizations, it’s clear that the past year has brought Microsoft’s browser new challenges. There are other options available over IE, and in Europe the company was forced to show users this fact. [...]