From the ‘haven’t we heard this story before’ files:
More than a decade ago, Microsoft settled a $750 million legal settlement with AOL Time
Warner over browser choice. That was in 2003 and was about Netscape (remember them?) the issue then was about choice and now in 2015 Microsoft is up to the same tricks – again.
Apparently (and i say apparently as i have no intention of running Windoze 10) when users upgrade to Windows 10, their existing browser choice is not respected and instead the default is the new Edge browser.
That doesn’t make Mozilla happy – and they want Microsoft to respect user choice, which of course make sense.
It’s unfortunate though that Mozilla is only taking this action now – and wasn’t more vocal about this issue in the months prior while Windows 10 was in beta. In fact, it is only now, several days after Windows 10 general availability that I’ve seen any mention public or otherwise, from Mozilla on this issue.
It’s enough to make one think that Mozilla waited, in a bid to embarrass Microsoft. Then again, I might be giving Mozilla too much credit, Mozilla is an organization that today is a shadow of its former greatness and seems to be behind, slow and tedious in all of its actions.
Firefox’s user share is in a precipitous free-fall from where I sit, with Chrome decimating its share and Mozilla’s own follies adding fuel to user desertion desires. In my own use case, when Mozilla moved from Google to Yahoo for its default search choice, Mozilla did not respect my choice. The explanation I got was it was some form of build related issue.
Mozilla is also not respecting its users’ views on the direct integration of Pocket, which has also led to desertion. Then of course there is the performance problem. That is, Mozilla still hasn’t quite figured out 64-bit Windows, meaning unfortunately Edge might well have an ‘edge’ on Firefox.
I’m all for user choice and personally i have chosen not to run Windows, but for those that do choose Windows, Microsoft really should enable browser choice, though I’m not sure all that many will choose Firefox anymore.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist
