Managing Microsoft

Kerrie Meyler

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The Browser Ballot

Microsoft's latest in its saga with the EU's Competition Commission

By Kerrie Meyler on Sat, 08/15/09 - 12:25am.

In response to the EU's concerns about Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer in Windows, Microsoft has offered to provide a "browser ballot" with the newest version of its operating system software.

Interesting enough, even without a ballot, Firefox has been making progress in the U.S. and Europe without any help from Microsoft (or the EU Commission). According to http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/03/firefox-3-marketshare-exceeds-internet-explorer-7-in-europe.ars, use of Firefox 3.0 surpassed IE 7 in Europe earlier this year.

For what its worth, bundling does not guarantee success of a product. It certainly didn't help Microsoft Money against Quicken! However, the EU seems to feel differently, so maybe the browser ballot (aren't browsers free, anyway?) will put this particular matter to rest, at least for a while. It's definitely a different approach than offering Windows to Europeans without any browser.

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About Managing Microsoft

Kerrie Meyler, MVP, MCSE, MCTS, MCT, is an independent consultant and trainer with over fifteen years of experience in IT. While at Microsoft in Field Technical Sales for four years she focused on infrastructure and mangement, presenting at numerous product launches. Kerrie has presented Operations Manager 2007 at TechEd 2007, MMS 2009, MMS 2011, and internal Microsoft conferences, receiving company recognition and awards including a SPAR MGS award. Kerrie worked with Microsoft Learning to develop functional specifications for the original Operations Manager Microsoft courseware, 2550: Implementing Microsoft Operations Manager 2000 and did the beta teach for that course.She also participated in development for several System Center certification exams.

Kerrie is the lead author of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Unleashed, System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed, System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 Unleashed, System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Unleashed, System Center Opalis Integration Server 6.3 Unleashed and System Center Service Manager 2010 Unleashed.

Check out an excerpt from System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed, Chapter 3: Looking Inside OpsMgr.

You can also check out an excerpt from System Center Configuration (SCCM) Manager 2007 Unleashed, Chapter 3: Looking Inside ConfigMgr.

Read a sample chapter of System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Unleashed at Chapter 1: Introduction and What's New.

You can also read a sample chapter of System Center Opalis Integration Server 6.3 Unleashed at Chapter 1: Introducing Opalis Integration Server 6.3 and System Center Service Manager 2010 Unleashed at Chapter 1:Service Management Basics.

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