The Fat Lady Sings: Microsoft Caves ... to Opera?!

[James]

Late last week, Microsoft announced something that virtually no one--myself included--saw coming. Rather than continue with its previous approach to dealing with antitrust regulators from the EU--an approach that, frankly, was the technical equivalent of a middle finger lofted in the direction of Brussels--Microsoft said that it would simply accede to the EU's demands.

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/microsoft_caves.asp

Great internet radio show on Twit expanding upon the above article.

Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott

http://twit.tv/WW117

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090715 Firefox/3.5.1 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

[Mandrake]

This whole things just reeks of desperation on the part of Opera. While Firefox has gained a large market share (i.e. 20%+) and other browsers like Safari have steadily increased their usage Opera has just stagnated the whole time with a pitifully low market share rate amongst all web browsers. According to a few sets of results I found on Google they suggest that even Chrome (which has been in the market for under a year) has a higher market share than Opera. They surely aren't trying to blame all their troubles on poor old Microsoft?!

Here is the actual blog post from Microsoft explaining how things will work.

It's rather surprising to see Microsoft willingly do this. It's also amusing to see Opera dead last in that screenshot from Microsoft.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1) Gecko/20090624 Firefox/3.5 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

[James]

Good points, Mandrake. Not sure if you gave a listen to Paul and Leo discussing the issue. It was their second topic, the first being the joining of Yahoo and MS. They both pretty much agree with your assessment: Opera is desperate. Outside of its presence on mobile devices, it's pretty much dead in the water. I know I gave up on it two versions ago.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090715 Firefox/3.5.1 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

[Antony]

I haven't spent a great deal on this news I must say, but if my observation is correct, Mozilla is surprisingly quiet on this aspect.

My guess (some of you might not like it): Mozilla is waiting to take the benefit of the European Commission ruling.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.12) Gecko/2009070609 Firefox/3.0.12