According to the investigative journalists over at CNet, Microsoft will unbundle IE8 from Windows 7 and release it as Windows 7 E. However, they’re actually taking this action preemptively, and the EU Antitrust courts haven’t actually specifically asked them to do anything yet. They’re also unbundling Windows Media Player from it and releasing it as Windows 7 N.
Despite my original projections, the only ways IE will be offered to clients at present are via CD in retail stores, FTP (which you’d have to do via command line), and a package that OEMs can choose to install prior to selling. It’s fairly obvious that OEMs will end up reinstalling the package, knowing that the alternative for said OEMs is to have to support clients through doing the install. There’s some chance that they might install Firefox instead, which would be great, given that it’s not only safer, but also more standards-compliant and with its extension engine, feature-rich. Besides this, unbundling the browser doesn’t keep the underlying rendering engine from being used elsewhere in the operating system — basically, everywhere Microsoft can reimplement it. They made this design choice back in Windows 98, their “innovation” being to graft internet functionality on every aspect of the OS they could manage, specifically to be able to say that it’s so fundamental to the operating system that it can’t possibly be removed.
The thing I really don’t understand about Microsoft’s design decisions with regard to bundling every bloody app they make that they have any kind of impetus toward driving marketshare. This is an obvious antitrust violation, and when you’re very nearly the monopoly in one market, to leverage that monopoly in other fields like web browsers and media players is just baiting the antitrust courts to step in. Granted, the US antitrust courts have traditionally been extraordinarily lax during the Bush era, but the EU at least is willing to step up and put MS in their place.
I have an idea though, something that could prove to be the ultimate solution to not only their wish to “suggest” their own software over others, but also to fixing the versioning hell they’ve been building up over the past few versions by subdividing each of their releases into first “home” and “pro”, then later “media center”, and “business”, and “pretty graphics version”, etc., etc. They’ll have to swallow their pride and take a cue off of Linux, though, and you know that ain’t going to happen. Basically, their way out of both issues is to strip down Windows to its absolute basics, then create a repository system akin to Yum or Apt, where after an OS install, you then have the option to download and install all sorts of software without needing any web browser at all. Every package is vetted to ensure it’s virus-free, the repository could be configured to link to third-party repositories for all sorts of free or shareware software, including their Internet Explorer and Media Player, to avoid antitrust issues. They could even build a pay scheme something like iTunes or the iPhone app store, so as to use it to deliver their various multiple versions of Office and add-on packs for Windows to deliver “Pro” functionality like being able to connect to a domain.
The only issue with this potential setup is that not only would Microsoft have to take cues from its two biggest competitors, but they’d have to provide a very easy way of getting their competitors’ software — and that will never happen. They’d cry “unfair marketplace” in that they’d be forced to help out everyone who makes any sort of software that competes against their products, and it would probably take a prescribed remedy from an antitrust court before they’d ever open up the playing field to give the customer an actual, meaningful choice in the matter.
