Microsoft rivals push to send browser ballot on world tour
The lobbying group European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) today called on antitrust regulators worldwide to follow the European Commission and pressure Redmond into offering a browser ballot, similar …
Context & Ripple Effects
The push follows a two-year arc inside Europe: Microsoft agreed under Commission pressure to ship a browser-choice screen rather than bundle only Internet Explorer, a commitment it laid out ahead of the Windows 7 launch in Europe, after years of softening its public stance on alternatives — including Ballmer's stated interest in the open-source browser market in late 2008.
Google had already framed the issue as a principle with its 2009 'user choice' policy post. What changes with ECIS's move is the geography: instead of one regulator extracting a concession from one company, ECIS wants every major antitrust authority to treat Microsoft's European remedy as the exportable template.
First-order effects
- Microsoft now faces parallel negotiations with regulators outside Europe, where it can no longer settle once and be done — each jurisdiction could demand its own version of the browser ballot.
- ECIS, which represents Microsoft's rivals in interoperability disputes, converts the European Commission's precedent into a ready-made demand package for regulators who lacked one.
Second-order effects
- Rival browser makers stand to gain a new distribution channel wherever a ballot is adopted, since choice screens put Opera, Firefox, Chrome and Safari in front of users who would never have switched manually.
- If multiple regimes adopt different ballot designs or timing rules, Microsoft faces fragmented Windows builds per jurisdiction, raising compliance costs that smaller bundling disputes never carried.
Third-order effects
- The pattern points toward default-settings becoming standard antitrust currency: regulators learning that ordering a neutral chooser at the point of install can discipline an incumbent without breaking up a product or fining it into compliance.
- Industry groups like ECIS gain a repeatable playbook — win in one jurisdiction, then lobby others to import the remedy — which could accelerate coordinated multi-region scrutiny of dominant platform defaults.
The trend: Antitrust remedies are migrating from fines and structural fixes toward mandated user-choice mechanisms at the point of install, with the EU's browser ballot as the template competitors want exported worldwide.