Mozilla – with its Firefox browser, a direct descendant of the Netscape browser that played such a pivotal part in the great antitrust suit that the Justice Department brought against Microsoft in 1998 – is throwing its support behind the European Commission’s replay of that suit charging Microsoft with illegally bundling its Internet Explorer browser with its Windows operating system, something that has been going on now since 1995.
Of course the complaint, brought by Opera, which has got maybe 5% of the European browser market, ignores the fact that Microsoft’s browser action in Europe dropped to 59.5% in November according to XitiMonitor, down five points in six months. Firefox was at 31.1%.
But, hey, this is payback time. Opera chairman Bill Raduchel was chief strategist at Sun at the height of Sun’s rabid anti-Microsoft campaign.
Since a statement of objections (SO) from the EC is as good as a conviction, Mozilla and its chairman Winifred Mitchell Baker, a lawyer herself and a graduate of the Netscape legal department, wants in on crafting the EC’s remedy.
Recall that the EC’s Media Player solution – making Microsoft produce a player-free version of Windows – went over like a lead balloon.
In a blog that Ms Baker wrote the other day (http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/) she says, “An effective remedy would be a watershed event; a poorly constructed remedy could cause unfortunate damage.”
She has offered – and the EC has reportedly accepted – Mozilla’s “enormous expertise” as a resource in designing a remedy and will be “reaching out to people I know with particular history, expertise and ideas.”
She describes it as an “extremely complex area, involving browsers, user experience, the OEM and other distribution channels, and the foundations for ongoing innovation.”
As an “interested third party” in the case, Mozilla would have access to the secret SO, get a seat at the table at the hearing that’s likely to be part of the process and stick its two cents in.
Baker’s position is that “the damage Microsoft has done to competition, innovation, and the pace of the web development itself is both glaring and ongoing” and that “the damage is so great that it makes it difficult to figure out an effective and timely remedy.”
Although Firefox has eaten into Microsoft’s market share she warns against reading much into it. It “does not indicate a healthy marketplace for competitive products.” Firefox is an “anomaly,” she says – the “single example of anyone ever regaining market share from a Microsoft monopoly” – and “a single anomaly does not indicate a healthy, competitive or innovative system.”
“Hundreds of millions of people use old versions of IE, often without knowing what a browser is or that they have any choice in the quality of their experience.”
The other reason in her mind for Firefox’ success is that Mozilla is a non-profit. “I am convinced,” she writes, “that we could not have been, and will not be, successful except as a public benefit organization living outside the commercial motivations. And I certainly hope that neither the EU nor any other government expects to maintain a healthy Internet ecosystem based on non-profits stepping in to correct market deficiencies.”