And so it came to pass that Microsoft gave in to wishes of its competitors, in the face of pressures from the EU, to allow a browser ballot screen to appear on all versions of Windows in Europe just so struggling browsers (*cough* Opera *cough*) could potentially gain a larger market share.
Microsoft have just announced that they will begin rolling out the ballot screen to European users of Windows over the next few weeks.
As you can probably tell I am not a fan of the ballot idea, it is a fixed to a non existent problem and has only come about because Opera wanted a larger browser market share on desktop because it can’t get enough on its own merits (its mobile version is very good). I believe the people this is trying to get to choose another browser will simply ignore this screen, they aren’t interested in what browser they are using, hence they have to be informed of other ones through the ballot screen. Or if they do decide to read the screen they will stick with the name they know, Internet Explorer, because they don’t like change.
All this will do is cause confusion and annoyance for many users who really don’t care which browser they use or which one has the largest market share.
Its interesting that Apple have not been remanded over the same issue of the default browser on their OS…oh no wait Safari has a similar market share to Opera.
