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Did Microsoft Pay $12.75 Million To Opera To Settle Interoperability Problems?

Rumors, Conspiracies, etc.

from the could-be... dept

Mon, May 24th 2004 9:53am — Mike Masnick
Back in 2001, there was a big stink when people realized that anyone visiting MSN with an Opera browser were told that they needed to "upgrade" their browser to IE in order to view the page. People immediately (and perhaps rightfully so) started accusing Microsoft of unfairly leveraging their monopoly power to shut out a perfectly reasonable (and more standards compliant) Opera browser. Last week, Opera put out a short press release saying that they had received $12.75 million to settle a problem, but didn't indicate from whom. Now, people are starting to say that it was Microsoft, paying off Opera to avoid a lawsuit on the issue - which, to this day, they insist was simply a programming error, and not an attempt to get Opera users to switch to IE.
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  • identicon
    tubedogg, 24 May 2004 @ 11:39am

    Maybe I'm missing something...

    ...but what exactly would the lawsuit be about? Microsoft has every right to do whatever it wants with its' sites. Maybe you don't agree that they should be shutting out Opera users, but there is no inherent right of Opera users (or anybody else, for that matter) to be able to visit MSN.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Mike (profile), 24 May 2004 @ 11:44am

      Re: Maybe I'm missing something...

      Considering the antitrust problems Microsoft has faced, if it comes to light that they're leveraging their monopoly power to block out a competitor... just think what a field day anti-trust officials would have.

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 24 May 2004 @ 2:05pm

        Re: Maybe I'm missing something...

        Only one problem: the anti-trust officials work for the Bush Administration. They have no interest in actually punishing Microsoft for anything, or making them change their behavior. So there will never be such a "field day".

        [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    kenbrown, 24 May 2004 @ 9:37pm

    M.S. & Ken Brown

    Ken Brown(of the 'Alexis de Tocqueville Institution) writes 'Linus Torvalds didn't write Linux.' Some notes on the "Who wrote Linux" Kerfuffle: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/ http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/brown/followup/ Could you ask Ken if the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution is funded by Microsoft?

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]


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