Select your web browser - too much choice?

Microsoft has been forced to display a web browser choice screen in Windows in the EU. You can see the screen here and there are 12 browsers to choose from, including Internet Explorer 8.

Several of the alternative web browser makers are unhappy and the reason is that they are off the screen and so cannot be seen unless the scroll bar is used to drag them into view. It's not clear why Microsoft would use this tiny window to display just five at a time when the screen is easily large enough to display all 12. If you reload the page you'll see that their positions are random, but the first five are always the same, just in a different order. They are the five most popular, but a benefit to Microsoft is that it looks like it's only competing against another four.

What's puzzling is why this has been forced onto Microsoft. Surely you can't have one set of rules for one company and another set for everyone else. It doesn't make sense and it just isn't fair. Why should Microsoft be forced to display this web browser choice screen and not Apple? Shouldn't Apple be forced to offer Safari, Camino, Chrome, Firefox and others? Why does every Linux distro come with Firefox? Where's the browser choice screen in Linux? The only operating system that is forced to provide a choice is Microsoft and that's wrong. The same rules should apply to everyone.

Perhaps we'll see an OS choice screen pop up on new PCs and Microsoft will be forced to display download links for Linux distros. That would be crazy, but so is the browser choice screen. Most people know they have a choice of browsers and are quite capable of downloading alternatives. After all, they are free.

It's Microsoft's OS and it should be able to bundle whatever software it wants with it, just as Apple does and Linux distros do. Besides, the browser choice screen is not needed because people are leaving Internet Explorer for better alternatives anyway and market share is declining steadily. We don't need browser choice screens. We're not stupid and when a better browser comes along we'll switch anyway. It's already happening.