If Windows Didn't Ship With IE, How Would You Download Firefox?

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]