Hey, let me share with you a few brilliant ideas I came up with recently!
- Let’s propose to Google (72.39% search market share) the following – on the top of every search results page, instead of providing a link to only Gmail, Google should provide a link to Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail as well. While we are at it, let’s put links to Hulu and Veoh next to the link to Youtube.
- Also, how ’bout if we ask Apple (~70% portable music player market share) to give users a direct link within iTunes (or maybe even from within the iPod itself) to buy music from the Zune Marketpace and Rhapsody?
- Or maybe we should request Adobe – who’s Acrobat Reader is found on virtually every PC today – to forcibly install Silverlight and the .NET runtime during the Acrobat Reader installation process just like it forcibly installs Adobe AIR?
And the reason for these proposals?
Because if we don’t do it, consumers will be hurt since they won’t have “choice”.
Because if we don’t do it, consumers will be absolutely incapable of downloading and installing Silverlight themselves or typing in the URL for Hulu or Rhapsody under their own power. 
If these ideas sound ludicrous to you, it’s because they are. No one will ever be able to bring up these silly proposals without being laughed out of the room.
Unfortunately, this exact silliness is happening right now during an antitrust case brought about by Opera against Microsoft in the European Union (EU).
Here is the money quote:
Opera execs said last year that Opera is in favor of seeing Microsoft be required to distribute its competitors’ browsers via its Automatic Update mechanism and/or to bundle its compeitors’ browsers with Windows.
Let’s put two and two together, shall we?
- Either due to an inferior product, poor marketing, or bad management, Opera has not been able to grow their web browser market share over the last decade (0.7% web browser market share). Even though browsers like Safari, Firefox, and Chrome (which all didn’t have the headstart Opera had) managed to grow their market share organically during the same period of time.
- Opera is an European company based in Norway.
- Norway, while not technically a country under the EU, is required to adopt much EU legislation due to its participation in the European Economic Area (EEA). Additionally, Norway has chosen to opt into many of the Union’s programmes, institutions and activities.
- The EU likes to protect their European interests and stick it to the big, bad American corporations.
- Opera is incompetent to compete, so it goes for the easy way out and files a complaint with the EU against Microsoft knowing that it will have a good chance of getting a favorable result.
You think Opera really cares about punishing Microsoft via monetary fines? Of course not! All they care about is getting Opera browsers out onto as many users’ desktops as possible. And if they can “legally” force itself upon a competitors platform to help them distribute their browser, all the better.
Folks, I hope everyone can see that this is not about justice or anything like that, but simply a desperate ploy for a company who have struggled to gain desktop browser share for over a decade.
Remember, antitrust legislation is supposed to be about protecting the consumer and antitrust cases are supposed to be about proving harm to consumers. While Microsoft’s web browser bundling policies – and I use the word “bundling” loosely, since the web browser is a necessary component for many internal Windows functions – *may* have a case to be made that it hurt competition, I find it hard to prove that that Microsoft’s policies have hurt consumers.
It is no different than what Google, Apple, Adobe, or any other company does to leverage their market positions to promote and grow their other offerings and businesses.
Let’s call it what it is – the whole exercise is simply Opera’s desperate ploy to try and gain undeserved market share. And lucky for them that they just happen to have a government ally that’s willing to be their hatchet man.
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9 Comments
Stumbled upon this by accident, and even though it’s old I have to make a comment.
You’re making a fool of yourself, Mozilla and Google are also in on it.
Right, Mr. Anonymous – I’m the one making a fool of myself.
Get your facts straight:
Opera was the one who filed the antitrust complaints all the way back in 2007:
http://www.opera.com/press/releases/2007/12/13/
Mozilla and Google didn’t join in the fun until April earlier this year (2009), and only as a third-party status.
Meaning these are interested parties, but it’s still basically an antitrust case between Opera vs. Microsoft:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2527
If it wasn’t for Opera’s ineptitude in promoting its own browser, this whole thing wouldn’t have happened.
Mozilla and Google, unlike Opera, actually have a good browser and decent enough marketing that grew market share over the past decade.
yes, opera is getting desperate. The browser market is extremely competitive now, and the main draw of opera (speed) is gone; it lags behind every browser, except IE.
not only that, now that they’re getting left behind in the browse warsr, they’re getting into practices of dubious legality; they’re turning their browser into a peer to peer server.
move over lime-wire, when you want illegal goods sing the opera tune.
Idiots
I pretty much agree with what you’re saying. I find the use of government to force others to make you favors an extremely deplorable tactic.
However, Microsoft is guilty of repeatedly doing the same thing in other areas. I don’t recall that MS brought an antitrust against anyone, nor are they really in a position of doing that, but there are many ways government is used against competition. One example, for instance, are software patents and aggressive copyright related lawsuits through such organizations like BSA (which is a software equivalent to RIAA and MPAA from what I understand).
I know though you believe patents and copyrights are all fair game while antitrust isn’t, but really, in my book all of these are means of using the government to your ends instead of competing solely through the market.
All this however does not excuse one bit what Opera is doing. I’m just pointing out that MS isn’t completely innocent of similar strategies either, albeit they sure aren’t the only ones. Use of government against competitors is such a common tactic today that it’s considered normal, and people usually decry it only when they’re the ones targeted. It’s a man eat man world unfortunately.
I hope it wont be that way forever though.
Regards
Thanks for your comment.
To make it clear, I’m not against antitrust legislation. If a company is disobeying the law (like Microsoft was in the previous antitrust charges from the DoJ in the US), then the company should suffer the consequences.
Microsoft was found guilty of antitrust violations in the US, paid the price, and everyone moved on.
The important thing is that the whole process has to be just and fair.
What I take issue with is that IMO, the way the current antitrust proceedings are progressing in the EC, it is not just and fair.
The way I interpret it is this: An incompetent European browser company who cannot gain any desktop market share whatsoever over the past decade (while upstarts like Firefox, Safari, and Chrome can), has no choice but to complain to the EC.
I bet if you asked Opera which of the following two outcomes they preferred: 1) Install Opera on every Windows PC or 2) Fine MS 2 billion dollars in the name of justice, they will prefer the former.
I doubt they really care about the consumers, when the consumers really are the ones antitrust legislation is supposed to protect.
Case in point. Microsoft’s solution of unbundling IE with Windows 7 addresses the antitrust charges in a simple and straightforward way. But Opera doesn’t like it, since that will do nothing for Opera’s business.
Unfortunately, being an European company, the EC has Opera’s ear a whole lot more than they have Microsoft’s…
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