Browsers act as the gatekeeper to the Internet, which has become the backbone of economic activity and which has moved from mostly text-based web pages to applications where music, video, photo editing, document creation, data storage, gaming, email and other activities can be carried out online with the browser. With the advent of cloud computing, browsers will play an ever more important access role.
Of particular concern for PIN-SME is that tying practices prevent SMEs, whether as users, developers or content providers, from benefiting from the full potential of cloud computing to lower licensing costs or promote functionality across competing operating systems. For developers and content providers, cloud computing represents a vast potential to compete on a more equal footing with traditional software vendors and developers.
PIN-SME requested third-party status following the Commission’s 15 January Statement of Objections (SO) against Microsoft, which argued that Microsoft was abusing its dominant position by tying its IE browser to Windows. The SO resulted from a complaint filed in December 2007 by Opera, the Norwegian browser developer.
