Opera files antitrust complaint with the EU
Urges Microsoft to give consumers a genuine choice of standards—compliant Web browsers — Opera Software ASA, the only company that can put the Web on any device, filed a complaint with the European Commission yesterday which is aimed …
Context & Ripple Effects
Opera's complaint lands on an unusually busy Brussels docket: through 2007 the European Commission has been probing Google's search and privacy practices, pressing Apple over iTunes interoperability before its consumer chief backed off that position in March, and cracking down on astroturfed blogging. A small Norwegian browser vendor invoking antitrust law against the world's dominant software company fits that pattern of the EU acting where market share alone would not.
The story traveled widely on day one — Guardian Unlimited, PC World, CNET's blogs and ZDNet's 'All about Microsoft' all picked it up — with the Guardian explicitly framing it as rekindling the spirit of the 1998 US antitrust fight over Internet Explorer. Opera's own framing, per its CTO's public comments, is about Web standards rather than market share: consumers should get a genuine choice of standards-compliant browsers rather than whatever ships with Windows.
First-order effects
- Microsoft now faces a formal European Commission inquiry into tying Internet Explorer to Windows, forcing a legal-defense posture in Brussels on top of its existing US obligations from the 1990s case.
- Opera converts a niche-browser position into standing as complainant — the complaint gives it a seat in any remedy negotiation over Windows browser defaults.
Second-order effects
- Rival browser makers, most visibly Mozilla's Firefox, stand to gain distribution if the Commission forces Microsoft to unbundle IE or present alternatives at install time, shifting OEM and consumer default choices.
- Other platform vendors watching the docket — including Google, already under EU search and privacy scrutiny in 2007 — face pressure to pre-empt similar bundling complaints about their own default services.
Third-order effects
- If the Commission pursues the complaint, it extends the EU's structural-remedy playbook from media players to Web browsers, making default-software choice a recurring condition of operating-system dominance in Europe.
- The episode signals that browser distribution, not just browser technology, becomes the contested layer — pushing the industry toward install-time choice screens and standards compliance as regulatory requirements rather than competitive courtesies.
The trend: European regulators are widening antitrust enforcement from single bundled products to the defaults entire platforms ship with, and Opera's complaint makes the Web browser the next front.