Justice has been served and common sense has prevailed…even though it’s taken over five years for it to happen. The European Union has pulled a few blinders in its time, but few come close to the wild and wacky Windows Browser Ballot of 2009, which has at long last been cast off the face of the Earth.
If you’re not familiar with the idea, it was basically something of a mean-spirited poked at Microsoft by the European Commission in relation for Redmond’s decision to ship Windows with Internet Explorer baked-in several years prior. When the Ballot was enforced, it basically made it so that those installing Windows for the first time on a new or old machine were given a choice of web browsers from a random handful – one of which of course being Internet Explorer.
The idea being one of fair competition – make your choice and don’t let Redmond force you…genius stuff.
“Microsoft provided the Browser Choice update in accordance with a decision issued by the European Commission in December 2009,” reads the statement released by Microsoft today, confirming the end of the madness.
It was pretty obvious at the time that Ballot wasn’t going to make a blind bit of difference – this was of course an era during which Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was largely the be all and end all in the eyes of about 99% of the world’s PC-owning population. And so it proved, with analysts carrying out all manner of studies to show how it didn’t swing the punters in the direction of any of the alternative browsers on offer – at least not in numbers worth mentioning.
Of course, things are very different today with the likes of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome giving IE one hell of a combined run for its money. So while the bizarre Browser Ballot may not have really had any direct impact on things at all, the European Commission may well be reveling in the future it always wanted – a future where Internet Explorer isn’t the only browser hitting monstrous highs on a global basis.
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