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03 March 2010 Filed under Industry News
As of 1st March 2010, Microsoft are rolling out an update providing a choice of web browsers for installations of Windows XP, Vista and 7 in Europe
This follows a legal agreement between Microsoft and the European Commission regarding competition law. Microsoft committed in December to use the Windows Update service to present a browser choice screen for any user in Europe using one of the above systems and who have Internet Explorer set as the default browser
The Browser Choice Screen (originally called "Browser Ballot") offers 12 browser options, including Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Opera, and a number of smaller market share browsers using variations of the rendering engines of the major players. And of course, IE 8 is an option
Part of the agreement is that the browsers will be shown in random order.
How much difference this will make to Internet Explorer's market share remains to be seen, but one feature of the update service is that users can install multiple browsers, so there are benefits for end users as well as alternative browser manufacturers.
More information:
Update 5th March:
The smaller browser vendors represented are not happy about the fact that users have to scroll to see their browser offerings. By default only the big five browsers are shown (albeit in random order), and users have to scroll to the right to see the remaining seven options.
Six of the seven smaller browser makers have signed a petition requesting that more could be done to indicate to users that these additional options are available.
BBC News: Browser makers demand screen time