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[Fruit Pie Jones]

Before reading this thread I'm pretty sure I was unaware of this, being a privileged American and all:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/ff606439

The Browser Choice update is a software update for Windows that Microsoft is required to distribute in Europe as part of legal Commitments to the European Commission. The Browser Choice update is designed to inform customers who currently have Internet Explorer set as the default browser on their computers of the other web browsers available to them.

So Microsoft is legally obligated to tell Europeans that there are other browsers out there besides IE? Now I don't know whether to laugh or be saddened that you folks in Europe don't have access to search engines. Seriously, how do you find anything on the Internet without them?

How does the Browser Choice thing work, BTW? Every time you open IE, does Clippy pop up and say, "It looks like you're browsing the Web, mon ami. Are you aware that there are other browsers besides Microsoft Internet Explorer?" I hope he's wearing a beret; I really do.

[dosraider]

Originally Posted by Fruit Pie Jones

... Now I don't know whether to laugh or be saddened that you folks in Europe don't have access to search engines. Seriously, how do you find anything on the Internet without them?....

Don' take this whole thing too seriously, it's simply a matter of complete political idiocracy.

EU politics ....

Ah well, at least we didn't had a war in Western Europe in 60 years, so not all is bad.

[DarthHelmet86]

It's a joke, that why would you have to tell them can't they just search for it on Google like everyone else.

[dosraider]

That's what you get now here when installing Win7:


Also: in Win7 you simply can input 'firefox' in the explorer's adress bar to get connected to the download page, even without IE installed.

Once again peeps, this whole thing is a political idiocracy.

[Lulu_Jane]

It's almost as if there are people out there who aren't as familiar with the internet or their computer as we are.

[Japo]

Originally Posted by Lulu_Jane

It's almost as if there are people out there who aren't as familiar with the internet or their computer as we are.

Yes, they're called "politicians", and are the ones in charge of regulating everything they know nothing about.

[DarthHelmet86]

Who would think Lulu, but they aren't really putting it there for that reason. It is there cause they don't want to get a big lawsuit again. Cause bundling IE with Windows is the evilist thing to do ever. I think someone who has made a calculator program should sue Microsoft over the bundled calculator. (That is a joke but is about the same level as what has happened to lead to this point that they need to do that up there.)

[Lulu_Jane]

Yeah, this is all true I was just mildly poking at the assumption that everyone knows everything about their options all the time.

[DarthHelmet86]

To be fair Japo this would be because of courts and judges not politicians. Then again I don't know about Europe so maybe the politicians did step in and make a new law out of no where, but I would suspect a court case was brought first. Maybe it was the Netscape vs Microsoft one.

[Japo]

Courts merely enforce laws written and voted by lawmakers, ideally they can't judge one inch short or long of them. Moreover in the case of EU vs. MS I think it was the Comission that judged the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europea...antitrust_case

You may be thinking about this--where the case was initially brought about by the US "Federal Trade Commission", then later by the Justice Department and some states:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft

Not that I agree with "anti-trust" laws, to begin with, as old and established as they may be...