Google polishes Chrome, Microsoft calls foul | csmonitor.com



Google has done a lot to buff its browser recently. It regularly talks up the program?s speed, helpful updates, and growing developer community. But despite plenty of buzz among early adopters, Chrome holds a measly 1 percent market share.

That statistic could skyrocket if the European Commission has its way. A recent proposal would force Microsoft to include competing Web browsers with every copy of Windows. The EC hopes the additional options would break any potential monopoly that Microsoft could leverage by bundling Windows with its own Internet Explorer, which enjoys more than 90 percent worldwide market share.

Microsoft strongly protests the measure. According to its lawyers, the EC proposal would prevent one potential monopoly by promoting another. This argument ties back into how Google got its billions.


It is a poor argument. Having a monopoly is not illegal, assuming it wasn't obtained through illegal, anti-competitive actions. What is illegal is misusing a monopoly to restrict competition or consumer choice in another area.



In this case, including the browser with the operating system that comes pre-installed on over 90% of desktop computers sold is anti-competitive, because it makes it more difficult for the makers of other browsers to compete. Adding competing browsers breaks the monopoly by creating an oligopoly instead. This is slightly better, as "NotW" said in the comments, but does not solve the market competition and consumer choice problems that are caused when the monopoly-share operating system vendor pre-installs a non-OS application.



"walterbyrd" says in the comments, "Why is it okay for msft to have a monopoly, but a disaster for anybody else to have a monolopy[sic]?" This strikes at the heart of Microsoft's objection. Microsoft's fear is that Chrome (and Firefox) both come with Google search as the default, and this may help their search engine shoot even further ahead of others, making its advertising network stronger than it already is. This neglects the way that every user on every machine gets Windows Live Search as the default now, but its inferior results drive people to pay the neighbor's 13 year-old to switch it to Google. Having a choice of browsers merely means that people won't need to pay for a switch--they can just use a browser that already gives them good results for searching.



I have said it before: Microsoft is a powerful competitor and makes some pretty good (and some pretty bad) software. Their problem is that they fear the competitive market, the level playing field, and they do whatever they can to prevent having to live in that market. Personally, I believe that Microsoft will become smaller, nimbler, and even harder to beat once it sheds its evil monopoly-monster personna and allows its pieces and products to compete openly and without choice-restricting product-tying.



The key is getting the company to drop its anti-competitive and anti-user activities and get back to building software that knocks our socks off. That is the direction that the world is moving toward, so I encourage Microsoft to join the tide of freedom that is moving forward around the world. I encourage the EU to follow NotW's suggestion. Failing that, the top five browsers (as enumerated by NotW) should be pre-packaged with Windows.



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