Victimized by Popularity
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Technical
That’s what I think Microsoft Windows is - victimized by it’s popularity. Microsoft has been always been in trouble with antitrust laws. In Europe and Korea, they have to release special versions that don’t come bundled with Windows Media Player and (in Korea) Windows Messenger.
When you compare Windows XP with Linux and Mac OS X, all 3 OSes come with media players and instant messengers. So why can’t Microsoft do the same? It can be argued that IMs in OS X and Linux are multi-protocol based, as compared to Windows Messenger that uses MSN exclusively. However, IM companies don’t make a dime out of users who connect via multi-protocol IMs, as they are typically ad-free. In my opinion, antirust regulators can only force Windows to let user choose which media player or instant messenger to install during installation.
The reason I say so, is that there’s many users who simply want a simple media player that’ll play their CD/DVDs. They might not have internet connections to download whatever other application. I’m also thinking, how is Microsoft gonna release free version of Windows (supported by web-services and ads) in the future?
The situation with default search engines in Internet Explorer is a little more complicated, with each seach giant proposing different measures to protect it’s businesses. The details are available at Paul Thurrott’s Supersite.
As for the XPS document format, will Adobe one day be releasing products that supports both PDF and XPF?
Sigh.. the world of business, no wonder people say it’s like war.. end users like us, might not really see the benefits..
