If you buy a new PC in Europe next year, you’re going to see an unfamiliar little pop-up window the first time you boot up, asking you which internet browser you would like to set as the default. Believe it or not, that pop-up is the result of a bitter ten-year legal battle that was finally resolved this week.The EU has been involved in anti-trust charges against Microsoft for years, alleging that the company has operated as a monopoly in various ways. It was the weak regulatory system in the United States that allowed this to happen in the first place, but over the last decade the EU’s competition regulator has become increasingly assertive, and today it is widely acknowledged as the world’s regulatory body.
This specific dispute centred on the fact that since the vast majority of PCs use the windows operating system, the vast majority of computer users were using internet explorer as their web browser simply because it was presented as the only option with the system – even though it isn’t. IE is used by about 56% of internet traffic. This issue is just one of many complaints against Microsoft launched by the EU. Microsoft has paid €1.7 billion in fines to the EU so far.
