how is Microsoft stopping people from downloading and using other browsers? Of course they are going to be Internet Explorer installed with Windows, its there browser but unless they make is so that you can't download any other browser I don't see the problem. But maybe I'm just blind. It seems like there are far worst things that corporations are doing that the EU should be focusing on.

It forces end users to use Internet Exploder to navigate to and download the browser of their choice. What if they don't want Exploder on their computers at all? Microsoft is foisting an unwanted product upon them, even if it's only for a few minutes.

Believe me, I'd rather Exploder not be on my computer at all, and I've heard enough rumors about what removing Exploder does to the OS itself to not go there. But then again, I'm not in the EU; I'm in the US, which doesn't seem to care about enforcing antitrust law.

Isn't that roughly the same as saying, "my new Chevrolet comes equipped with Bridgestone Tires. But what if I don't want Bridgestone... what if I want Goodyear instead? Chevy is forcing me to drive to a tire store on tires I don't want on my car, even if it's only for a few minutes."?

Microsoft was giving preferential treatment to their own closed source browser. Because IE had such a large market share it led to web sites being coded such that only IE could render the pages properly. This gave Microsoft an unfair advantage.

....that it leaves openings for attack even if it is not the browser someone is using. There is no way of completely uninstalling it either.

I won't browse the web with Windows. I think of it as a game OS.

browser to use to download a better browser.

The fact that IE only has a 25% to 30% marketshare nowadays clearly demonstrates that the "bad old days" of Microsoft dominating the browser market are over. Back when this all started, installing a new browser was a serious chore for many nontechnical users. You had to download the software, figure out the installation routines, and get the software set up.

Nowadays all of the major competing browsers use trivially simple one click web installers. There's nothing to download or configure. This has lead to IE going unused for the vast majority of computer users.

The problem is simply that the EC is still operating under a definition of "browser monopoly" that dates back more than a decade and has been technically "moot" for a number of years. They want Microsoft to offer some sort of popup on first boot that allows the computer owner to choose the browser for their system. That model completely ignores the way modern browsers are installed and maintained, and would simply result in users having to re-download new versions all over again (if Microsoft had followed the EU's direction, the version of Firefox on the Win7 installer CD would have been 3.5, the version available when Win7 was released and the CD's were pressed. Firefox is currently at version 19. Bundling Firefox as part of the system would have been pointless, as you can't even UPGRADE from 3.5 to 19...you have to completely reinstall the software.)

The browser wars are over, and Microsoft lost. Punishing them now for being "anticompetitive" looks a bit silly. I'm sure Microsoft's lawyers will bring up when they appeal this...how can you be "anticompetitive" when the competition is beating your pants off?

The tree diagram was similar to here so you could follow threads easily.

1 - Microsoft XP, Win7 and Win8, etc., are not the same versions in Europe as they are here in the US.
2 - Internet Explorer is NOT a separate program, like Firefox, that can be just removed. It really is part of the operating system, even now. MS did that on purpose to ensure that Internet Explorer remained loaded and computer phobes, at least, would use it. And that was what the law suit was really all about.

In a real world, Microsoft would be broken up into two separate companies. OS and Software.

Go into a computer store and try buying a new brand name computer, without some version of Windows preinstalled on it.
Damn near impossible. That is what any competition is up against.

1) I'm fully aware of that. Each distro is localized. That's a pretty standard thing in the software world. It also doesn't have a thing to do with anything I said.

2) I'm a software engineer by trade, so I know that as well. The simple reality is that the integration of IE was necessitated by the rollout of .NET, which allows programmers to integrate web services into their applications without needing to bundle their own dedicated browsers and libraries. As many people who have attempted to remove IE learned the hard way, a LOT of third party software will stop working if IE isn't present.

The simple reality is that the relationship between Trident and Windows is roughly the same as the relationship between Webkit and OSX. The rendering engine is deeply integrated into the OS as a core component that can be used by any programs installed on the computer. This was done to simplify the jobs of software developers, to allow more consistency in development, and to increase security on the computers (can you imagine what it would be like if EVERY program that needed software connectivity needed to have its own dedicated internal browser libraries, and each had to be independently updated every time some new Internet security hole was found?) "IE" and "Safari" aren't really web browsers, but are simply frontends for the integrated layout engines in their operating systems. In truth, Microsoft didn't "integrate" IE into Windows. It eliminated IE, added a core rendering library to the operating system, and then created a new frontend called "IE4" that allowed people to use the Trident engine to browse the web directly.

Most people aren't technically proficient enough to comprehend the difference, but it's pretty important. Most Win programmers would have a shitfit if MS tried to remove the MSHTML functionality at this point.