Windows 7 Starter was sold domestically, however. Windows XP Starter and Windows Vista Starter had been sold only in a small number of markets outside the U.S. Starter, which had been preceded by same-named versions on both Windows XP and Vista, was meant to service the netbook market, the name for the smaller, less capable, and most importantly, cheaper notebook computers that juiced PC sales after their 2007 debut. Microsoft tried to hang onto the netbook market for a while longer with Windows 7 Starter, one of a ballooning number of SKUs (stock-keeping units) segregating the OS. That user had queried support representatives in March 2011, a month after the launch of SP1 and two months before the start of the span during which regulators claimed Microsoft had scratched the ballot, saying, "I do not see the options for the browser choice." Although a support engineer replied to the user in the online forum, he paid no notice to the question of the ballot's whereabouts. In fact, Microsoft had ignored a user who reported the omission of the browser ballot in Windows 7 SP1. Microsoft failed to disclose the snafu in the self-certified compliance reports it was required to submit to EU authorities. In mid-2012, Microsoft admitted the goof and apologized, even as it downplayed the problem, saying it had been purely a "technical error" and blaming an engineering team.
More than 15 million users did not see the ballot as they should have, the EU charged. Two years later, Microsoft agreed to show European users of Windows a "browser ballot," a screen that displayed download links to other browsers, including Google's Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox and Opera's namesake.īut Microsoft failed to show that ballot to users of Windows 7 SP1 for some 14 months, from May 2011 until July 2012. The March 2013 decision by EU officials - the first time regulators there punished a company for shirking an antitrust agreement - ultimately stemmed from a 2007 complaint by rival Opera Software, which alleged that Microsoft manipulated the battle for browser share by tying Internet Explorer (IE) to Windows. But then, what would you expect of an OS that fostered a class-action lawsuit? The three-quarters-of-a-billion-dollar snafuĪn oversight - so said Microsoft - with Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) cost the company €561 million ($732 million at the time) when the European Union's anti-trust regulators fined the firm for omitting a browser choice feature.
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