Microsoft Volunteers IE Removal From Windows 7 To Appease EU

12:30AM June 15, 2009 | Jack Loftus

As part of an effort to alleviate its current European Union-sized headache across the Atlantic, Microsoft has volunteered to remove Internet Explorer from Windows 7. The move is an about face for the company, which had previously testified such a removal was impossible.

Indeed, Microsoft has stated before that it would be impossible to remove the browser from Windows 7, due to the fact that “the browser is closely connected with the operating system.” However, thanks to EU pressure and a multi-billion dollar fine hanging over its head, Microsoft has miraculously discovered a way to make it so.

As a refresher, the EU demanded that MS remove IE (or include competitor’s browsers) in Windows because of its dominant 90% market penetration across the continent. According to an article at Swedish news site e24, the EU has also proposed that Microsoft include competitor’s browsers, including those from Opera, Mozilla and Google, as part of a settlement. [e24 (Swedish) - Thanks, Andreas]

Comments

  • Jon

    June 15, 2009 at 9:32 AM

    Does this ring as farcical to anyone else when Apple is able to dictate so many proprietary lockouts e.g. No you can’t run OSX on a non MAC, no we won’t change the Apple dock, no, you can’t run Flash on a iTouch/iPhone, no we won’t release iLife for Windows. It seems to me that if you applied the same rules to Microsoft they could lock in whatever they bloody well like.

  • Gav

    June 15, 2009 at 6:12 PM

    Yeah, it will be interesting to see if Apples market share continues to rise if the EU decide to put them in their place too. I wonder if Apple would play nice. Ha.

  • JM

    July 29, 2009 at 10:44 PM

    These measures are being put in place because they have so much market share, but who wants an operating system with all the different web browsers (ideally no one should be able to make the choice of what to include (i.e. only Opera, Firefox and Chrome) – it’s all or nothing) shipped with it?

    I would prefer that IE was only completely removable, so I could make a choice after installation, IF I really wanted to get rid of IE..

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