Browser Choice Screen

March 2010 were the month where Microsoft released their Browser Choice Screen or whatever. This little weird thing were the result of the European Union. For some reason they did not like the fact that Microsoft creates applications that can be used in their own operating system. It has been like this for several years now and it started with Windows Media Player which were not allowed to be an integrated part of Windows any more. Now Internet Explorer is the big problem as to many people uses it because they are unaware of alternatives. What is next? My beloved Paint? Nah, they ruined it themself in Windows 7 so who cares any more.

EU calls what Microsoft is doing as anti-competitive, or something like that. There is however just one big problem with that - there is a reason why people are unaware of alternatives: They have no clue what the fork Internet Explorer really is!

Google send a guy (called Scott) to Times Square, New York, to ask passers questions like "What is a browser?". The result can be seen on youtube. It is quite funny hearing the answers when you are a computer geek like me, but also kind of disturbing. So many people have absolutely no clue what they are doing when they use a computer at all ... and I am going to get a carrier where I create software for these :/ . It will be a pain.

In response to the decision by EU, Microsoft them self said that most people do not even known what a browser is, obviously implying that this was a ridicules act by EU - and I can only agree. Do not get me wrong, Internet Explorer is, and has been for a long time, the absolutely worst browser among the major contenders. Even Apple Safari beats it by miles!

It is basically like this: Opera > Mozilla Firefox > Google Chrome > Apple Safari > no internet > Internet Explorer.

But even though I hate Internet Explorer so much I still find this whole case lame. If I created an operating system and gave other people the possibility to create their own applications, why should I then be punished and not be allowed to have my own applications as the default choices? It just does not make any sense. Makes you wonder why Apple have not been a target of something similar - well at least not to my knowledge.

One good thing have come of this, however. Apparently downloads of Opera in Europe have doubled since this Choice Screen were added, so hopefully more people are actually getting the best internet experience :P .

*UPDATE*
An Opera blog made me aware of a browser benchmarking site created by Futuremark (the people behind the famous 3Dmark tests) called Peacekeeper. On my system I got the following result:

I still do not understand why anyone would ever use Internet Explorer on purpose, and it is almost scary how bad Firefox performs (without any plugins at all).