Opera has announced in a press release that it has "filed a complaint with the European Commission yesterday which is aimed at giving consumers a genuine choice of Web browsers.... Opera has requested the Commission to take the necessary actions to compel Microsoft to give consumers a real choice and to support open Web standards in Internet Explorer," it says.
"We are filing this complaint on behalf of all consumers who are tired of having a monopolist make choices for them," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera. "In addition to promoting the free choice of individual consumers, we are a champion of open Web standards and cross-platform innovation. We cannot rest until we've brought fair and equitable options to consumers worldwide."
Yeah, right.
Consumers would no doubt be delighted if Microsoft suddenly shipped a fully compliant browser and discontinued IE7. That would probably break a large proportion of the sites on the web, and kill e-commerce at a stroke. (No, we shouldn't be in this position. I wish we weren't. But the fact is, we are.)
Still, as I'm sure you will have noticed, Microsoft's defeat in the US and European courts has provided wonderful benefits to ordinary consumers, who are now dramatically better off than they were only five years ago. As you can see from, say, Vista, Microsoft has also benefited hugely from having squadrons of US Justice Department minions reading all its internal emails and adding layers of complexity to encourage a spirit of competition.
Also, a decade of anti-trust harassment has had a terrible effect on Microsoft's profitability. It has only managed to increase its net income from $2.2bn in 1996 to a measly $14.1bn this year. (Well, some of that may be Steve Ballmer's fault. Or Linus Torvalds'.)
Still, you have to wonder whose fault it is when Opera can only get a market share of 0.65% (on Net Applications numbers), when Firefox has managed to get 16.01% with a browser that has, er, borrowed so many of Opera's features. OK, so Google isn't pushing it, but is Opera really that much harder to download?
It would make more sense if Opera was simply setting out to trouser a truckload of Microsoft cash, the way Sun, RealNetworks etc did after Microsoft's defeat in the US courts. Where's the money angle?
