@ Those who still don't understand
Try reading and possibly comprehending what is actually going on here before spouting on about something you obviously don't have a clue about.
The issue is not about bundling as such, it is about a company with an effective monopoly including something that was so tightly integrated that it could not be removed without breaking the OS. What they included was so broken that it required kludges all over the place for anything to actually work with it. By including it, at a time when browsers were generally payware so people thought why pay extra when this comes with it "for free", they got the significant majority of users and so everyone had to include the kludges in their websites for anyone to actually use them.
This caused problems for anyone who wrote an alternative that worked properly, in that their software wouldn't work with the kludges and so people would continue to use the broken software instead, blaming the working software for the problems.
Opera brought this to the attention of the EU, the EU said we will look to see what we can do. MS pre-empted this by saying, OK we will no longer include the broken software. The EU, and Opera, quite rightly IMNSHO, have said this is no use, due to past actions the kludges are still needed and this breaks compatibility. The EU have said that they are still thinking about how this should really be fixed.
To those saying that the same applies to things like the calculator obviously don't understand the issue. To be analogous, it would be like the calculator included always saying that 2+2=5, MS defining this as a new standard and everyone having to update their number tables to compensate for this was correct for anything to work. Then along comes another supplier with a calculator that says 2+2=4, but of course when ever anyone use this it messes up the totals so they blame the new calculator. Complaint is made and MS say we will remove the calculator by default, however all the number tables still have the compensation in place so nothing actually changes, you still need the MS calculator to get anything done.
I did initially think that it was about the tight integration, however I have read the updates and taken time to actually understand, maybe some others should do the same. These will likely be the same people who are saying how terrible Opera is as an actual browser, they have obviously not taken the time or effort to actually use it, they have probably just installed it, run and, "Oh Noes, it doesn't look the same, and where do I add all the things I needs to make it functional and no I need to think and that's not right." then they uninstall and bad mouth it even though the problems were their's not Opera's.
Here's a clue, a few clicks from the built in menus and you can have the skin looking much like IE or Firefox. Those add ons you are looking for, you know, to block ads and scripts, pretend to be another browser and the like, they are there anyway, settable on a per site basis, and in the main preferences, heck many of them are little more that a right click away.
Icon for MS and those who seem to think that MS got it right.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
