“The current Microsoft announcement is too little, too late. Such a move would have been appropriate in 1997, but further action is needed to undo the effects of a decade of abuse,” said Thomas Vinje, spokesman for the anti-Microsoft lobby European Committee for Interoperable Systems. “Microsoft must give users real choice, and this should include not just buyers of new computers, but also existing users.” And just what is Vinje’s idea of “real choice”? Ballot screens offering a choice of at least five preloaded browsers for buyers of new PCS as well as Microsoft’s installed base of Windows users, via Windows and IE updates.

Mitchell Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation, took a similarly dim view of Microsoft’s (MSFT) plans for European versions of Windows, questioning the company’s motives and wondering if it might not intend to somehow give PC makers an incentive to bundle IE back into Windows at the OEM level. “It’s impossible to evaluate what this means until Microsoft describes–completely and with specificity–all the incentives and disincentives applicable to Windows OEMs,” she wrote in a blog post. “Without this it’s impossible to tell if Microsoft is giving something with one hand and taking it away with the other. For example, if Windows marketing dollars are tied to IE or browser-based programs, then the ties to Windows are still distorting the browser market. One could think of many other examples. As a result, it’s also impossible to tell whether this does anything more than change the technical installation process of the OEMs.”

Baker did, however, concede that Microsoft’s solution will achieve one thing: annoying the hell out of Windows users abroad. “It will certainly make life more difficult for people upgrading to Windows 7,” she said.

With a 20 percent share of the the world-wide browser market and 31 percent of its European segment, Mozilla’s Firefox browser has clearly proven that Microsoft Internet Explorer is not immune to free-market competition.

But the natural course of the free markets is apparently not moving fast enough for the European Commission, which is mulling forcing Microsoft (MSFT) to include browsers other than IE in its Windows OS.

Seems that the idea of unbundling IE from Windows has been superceded by a push to bundle even more browsers with it. People close to the case tell The Wall Street Journal that regulators may demand a so-called ballot screen that would present PC users with an array of browser choices, and the option to designate one of them as a default. The EC believes doing so would dilute Microsoft’s advantage in the field and certainly it would do that.

Though at this point, one wonders why that’s even necessary. In April, IE’s market share in Europe was about 48 percent, down from more than 80 percent a few years ago.

Among the browser’s new features: an Opera-like Top Sites, which displays a mosaic of frequently visited pages; a Cover Flow visualization of browsing history that allows users to peruse previously viewed Web sites as they would albums in iTunes; improved tabbed browsing; Full Page Zoom, for a closer look at any Web site without degrading the quality of the site’s layout and text; and improved Windows integration that gives Safari a native look when its running on XP or Vista. Safari 4 is also Acid3-compliant, which means it has passed the Web Standards Project’s Acid3 Browser Test.

Notably absent from Safari 4’s new features list: further security enhancements, something that rival browsers have been quite focused on as of late and which Safari could clearly use.

Mozilla is not only adding its voice to that of European antitrust regulators who claim Microsoft’s (MSFT) bundling of IE with its Windows OS is anticompetitive, but offering its counsel as well. In a post to the Mozilla blog last weekend, Mozilla Corporation CEO Mitchell Baker said that she had “not the single smallest iota of doubt” that the European Commission’s preliminary conclusion that “Microsoft’s tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system harms competition between Web browsers” is correct. “I’ve been involved in building and shipping Web browsers continuously since before Microsoft started developing IE, and the damage Microsoft has done to competition, innovation, and the pace of the Web development itself is both glaring and ongoing,” Baker wrote. “There are separate questions of whether there is a good remedy, and what that remedy might be. But questions regarding an appropriate remedy do not change the essential fact. Microsoft’s business practices have fundamentally diminished (in fact, came very close to eliminating) competition, choice and innovation in how people access the Internet.”

A brutal attack and one that’s apparently only just beginning. Baker concluded her missive by volunteering Mozilla’s advice on potential remedies. “I’d like to offer Mozilla’s expertise as a resource to the EC as it considers what an effective remedy would entail,” she writes. “I’ll be reaching out to people I know with particular history, expertise and ideas regarding these topics.”

A bit like Muhammad Ali offering tips on how to score his historic fights with Joe Frazier, no? Anyway… the EC has reportedly accepted Mozilla’s offer and will allow it to participate in the case as an “interested party.”

A note about the headline: It’s a joke. I am well aware of FTP and KDE, Gnome, etc. and their non-IE browsers. No need for lectures.

[Image Credit: DeviantART/letitbeatles]