How to Save the Web, Part Three: Opera’s Litigation

In part one of this series I lamented Microsoft’s unwillingness to conform to web standards and the stifling effect this has on web innovation. I suggested two possible solutions: a paradigm shift (such as a move towards Rich Internet Applications) that makes it easier to deploy alternate runtimes without having to convince the user to switch browsers, or the use of ActiveX to integrate new web standards into Internet Explorer in spite of Microsoft. Yesterday Opera announced that it was adopting a third approach: sue the bastards.

It’s hard not to feel sympathetic to Opera’s cause. IE boasts a considerable majority of web users not through intrinsic merit but as a direct result of Window’s dominance. Like any market leader, Microsoft has the most to lose from browser interoperability, so it’s dug in its heels and refused to support fully standards such as CSS, JavaScript 2 and HTML 5. The main losers are not just browser vendors like Opera and Mozilla but anyone who uses the web, since much-needed improvement in web application infrastructure is massively hampered when the space’s two ton gorilla (with around 80% market share) refuses to play along.

Nonetheless, Opera’s tactics are problematic. First of all, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the litigation is at least partially a ploy on Opera’s part to garner publicity for its browser. Their CTO, Håkon Wium Lie, categorically denies this, but phrases like the following are bound to raise suspicions:

Opera has long held the position of innovator in the Web browser market, having introduced and pioneered features like tabbed browsing, Speed Dial, integrated search bar, mouse gestures, Opera Link™ and many others.

I have the greatest respect for Opera’s engineering prowess, and Håkon is a brilliant and genuinely nice guy. (Not to mention that he sports a cool little circle over his first name. Where can I get me one of those?) But even if there was no malice intended, it might have been a good idea to tone down the chest-thumping a bit in order to avoid a potential backlash from mean-spirited cynics like yours truly.

More critically, Mary Jo Foley is absolutely correct in pointing out that we don’t want the European Commission deciding what’s a proper web standard and what isn’t. The main web standards consortium, the W3C, doesn’t make real standards at all because it has no official standing. Instead it issues “recommendations”. There is thus no objective basis for deciding which technologies a browser vendor is supposed to support. As frustrating as this can sometimes be, we have to let the market make this determination.

Perhaps Opera will win its case and Microsoft will be forced to offer an IE-free Windows. This wouldn’t bother me one whit. But even were this to come to pass, I’m not sure how much it would accomplish. Both Firefox and Opera are free and could easily be bundled by hardware OEMs today if they felt this would offer them a competitive advantage. In fact, I predicted this would happen back in January 2006, and I’ve been sorely disappointed (for reasons I don’t entirely grasp). Microsoft’s intransigence is undeniably a tough nut to crack, but I’m not sure that litigation is the answer.

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11 Comments »

1. Mått.

   There you go.

   Comment by ringmaster — 12/14/2007 @ 8:32 pm

2. Hehe, excellent!

   Comment by Matt — 12/14/2007 @ 8:45 pm

3. The Microsoft Internet Explorer is very important! It is essential for downloading Firefox (or alternatively Opera)!

   Comment by some anonymous reader — 12/14/2007 @ 8:51 pm

4. I don’t think an EU court deciding that Microsoft is actively holding back progress is in any way a bad thing, even if their fines are miniscule in comparison to the money being made, even if their ‘remedies’ are ineffective. It raises the issue in an official forum and gives extra weight when mandating open standards (e.g. for government websites or streaming television)

   Comment by dave — 12/14/2007 @ 8:54 pm

5. Matt, you don’t want the a-ring character. If you had it, your name would be pronounced more like “mot” Also, another representation of that character is “aa” and “Maatt” just looks silly

   - A

   Comment by Asa Dotzler — 12/14/2007 @ 10:19 pm

6. Yeah I guess I just have diacritic envy. 10 years in the Czech Republic will do that to you.

   Comment by Matt — 12/14/2007 @ 10:37 pm

7. I wouldn’t worry too much that the EU is likely to demand certain technologies that browsers have to implement - they’re more likely to block non-standard feature creep into IE8. Not that Mozilla/Gecko has anything to fear there…

   As for “suing” and “litigation”, these are very incorrect (and dare I say American) words for a European “complaint” “filing”

   - Jo̊hn

   Comment by John Drinkwater — 12/14/2007 @ 10:41 pm

8. Not to mention how Maatt could then become Måått and consequently Maaaatt. You could sign official documents by drawing an NFAε.

   Also, “mått” means ‘measurement’ in Swedish, the language of kings and buxom blonds.

   Comment by ringmaster — 12/15/2007 @ 2:37 am

9. You are completely contradicting yourself by suggesting the EC shouldn’t determine web standards and the W3C is useless, so let’s let the market decide. That is exactly what we have now and all it has produced is a monopoly for the entity willing to engage in more nefarious practices than anyone else -> Microsoft. In part one (which is where?) you seem to express a dislike of this situation yet you are happy for it to continue, as it certainly will even if the Windows Media Player debundling penalty is handed out.

   What about a solution where the EC says that web standards must be followed but determined by an independent third party, thus providing the official standing you admit the W3C standards lack?

   All the EC has to do is determine that Microsoft has benefitted from it’s monopoly not just by bundling IE with Windows, but by producing a browser that does not play well with others.

   The last thing we need is to sit back and hope market forces magically present us with an open web. Market forces are corrupt and always will be. That Microsoft can absorb a half billion dollar hit without blinking an eye is proof of that.

   1) We need a strong independant body to determine standards.

   This independant body should accept input from, and collaboratively develop standards with, all market players including - ideally - a user representative body.

   W3C?

   Well whatdya know, we already have one!? Who would have thought?

   2) We need a powerful, multi-national, democratically-elected, representative body to police the adoption / implementation of these standards.

   EC?

   Well whatdya know, we already have one!? Who would have thought?

   What is hard to understand about this argument?

   Europe has a unique opportunity, through the Opera court case, to push the web towards the open and innovative medium that it was always intended to be, an opportunity to precious to pass up.

   Comment by pd — 12/15/2007 @ 10:18 am

10. Pd,

    I appreciate your comment but I couldn’t disagree more. As I made clear, I don’t think the current situation is ideal by any means, and I suggest two courses of action in part one (first hyperlink in this post). Both of these will require considerable effort, and it’s appealing to think that we can wave a magic wand and fix the web, but the whole point of my post is that I don’t think this is possible.

    The W3C is a deeply flawed institution. It has done a lot of good work in the past, but at the end of the day it is an industry consortium composed of cut-throat competitors, and high-profile standards efforts tend to get bogged down in protracted infighting. This has resulted in bloated and disappointing efforts like XML Schema and RDF. Others (e.g. XPointer) have failed to achieve any mindshare or adoption at all among vendors. Who would benefit from having these shoved down our throat?

    Meanwhile, there are other bodies such as the WHAT WG and IETF doing useful, promising work. Should we reject any resulting specifications because they have been produced by the “wrong” organization?

    Finally, the Europe Commission is about the furthest thing imaginable from a “democratically-elected, representative body”. Elected by whom? I certainly didn’t get to vote. I’m a huge Europhile but let’s get the facts straight.

    I understand and share your frustration with the glacial pace of improvement in web standards support, but having “standards” imposed on us by big, bureaucratic bodies like the W3C and EC sounds like the worst-case nightmare scenario to me. Market forces may leave the door open to abuse and corruption, but history has shown that central planning is much, much worse.

    Comment by Matt — 12/15/2007 @ 6:13 pm

11. IE8 is passing the ACID2 suite now, so maybe not as non-conformant as you feared?

    I’ve used all three (Opera, Firefox and IE) and IE is not as bad as claimed, nor is Firefox as good as claimed.

    Comment by michael — 12/22/2007 @ 6:37 pm

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