Search engines now part of browser war

Mon 11 May 2009 09:10, Bas van den Beld

The battle of the browsers in Europe has been taken to the European courts. A case, started in 2007 by Opera, reaches its peek in June when the hearings take place in Brussels, Belgium.

According to the New York Times Microsoft will defend their case by pointing at someone else: Google. They are claiming that opening up the Microsoft platform to other browser will make Google to powerfull.

Norwegian browser Opera started this in 2007, claiming Microsoft was mis-using the fact that they succesfully produce operating systems by pre-instaling Internet Explorer. They were backed by amongst others Mozilla, Google, Adobe, Nokia, Sun and IBM.

The European commission acknowledged the claim and in January said it might be ordering Microsoft to pre-install other browsers on their system.

Microsoft claims that not pre-installing Internet Explorer is not possible and now fires back with another angle. They are claiming that if they pre-install other browsers Google's dominance will only grow even further. Most other browsers, like Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, have Google as their prefered search engine, with that making Google even a bigger size of the market.

According to Statcounter since April Internet Explores still has got the biggest share in Europe. But that is only because several versions of the browser are running. Firefox holds a share of 35%, Internet Explorer 7 34%. Internet Explorer 6 11%, and IE8 2.3%.

Pre-installing other browsers would surely decrease the share Internet Explorer has. And with Microsoft Live as a default search engine would therefore decrease the Microsoft-, and thus increase the Google-, share in the search engine market. So Microsoft does have a point, but do they have a case..?

<Our weekend reading list - May 2...

Did you spot the Chrome commercial?>

Comments (1)

- Web seo specialists las Vegas
- [website]
Thanks for the sharing of such information. we will pass it on to our readers. This is a great reading. Thanking you. <a href="http://www.seochampion.com">Web seo specialists las Vegas</a>

Vr 29 jan 2010, 09:33

Comment

5 Why Reasons Your SEO Campaign ...

Thu 22 Apr 2010, Susie Hood

6 comments

Dan, Senior SEO Programmer at SEO Consult, shares his thoughts on why many search engine optimisation campaigns don't bring the success that they should. 1. Unrealistic targets.Unrealistic targets are the number one cause of campaign failure. This is the responsibility of both the client and the SEO Company. The client should know that SEO is like any normal business strategy, start small, set targets and progress. The SEO should have managed the expectations of the client. They should have ...... read more

New agreement with Facebook coul...

Tue 16 Feb 2010, Editors

0 comments

New agreement with Facebook could be turning point for Bing

End of last week Facebook renegotiated its agreement with Microsoft. One of the consequences is that Facebook will take care of its own display ad business but the big...... read more

Internet Explorer 6: to support,...

Tue 9 Feb 2010, Dennis Sievers

1 comment

Internet Explorer 6: to support, or not to support?

As we all probably know by now, Google is about to kick Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 to the curbs. Following a whole bunch of other companies, Google’s ...... read more

Google engineer on privacy

Thu 4 Feb 2010, Bas van den Beld

0 comments

At the Brussels Techtalks Google's engineering lead for privacy Dr Alma Whitten talked about her view on privacy after working for Google for seven years. "learn from the good guys, fight the bad guys, and invent the future." The sound quality of the video is not very good so be sure to turn up the volume wherever you can. ... read more