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Kas Thomas

Microsoft Sued Over (Lack of) Standards Compliance

14-Dec-2007

Tags: Web Content and Experience Management, Industry Standards

Is lack of standards compliance an anti-trust issue? The Opera folks think so. Yesterday, the Norwegian browser-maker submitted an anti-trust complaint against Microsoft to the European Commission.

"We are filing this complaint on behalf of all consumers who are tired of having a monopolist make choices for them," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera Software ASA. "In addition to promoting the free choice of individual consumers, we are a champion of open Web standards and cross-platform innovation. We cannot rest until we've brought fair and equitable options to consumers worldwide."

Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie summarizes Opera's position nicely in a video at Dailymotion.com.

Opera is asking the European Commission for two remedial actions. First, it asks the EC to require Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows, and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop. Secondly, it asks the Commission to make Microsoft agree to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities.

Regrettably, Opera isn't specifying which "open Web standards" are not being followed, but one can reasonably suppose that a major point of contention is XHTML 1.1, which IE7 still doesn't support properly.

One might also surmise that HTML 5 is high on Opera's list. Ian "Hixie" Hickson, one of the principal co-authors of the HTML 5 draft, worked for Opera until 2005 (when he joined Google).

Who knows how many chairs Steve Ballmer might throw over this one. But it's worth watching. Across every technology we cover, browser standards compliance (and non-compliance, and attendant application incompatibilities) remain a big challenge for the customers we talk to.