Microsoft blocks Safari and Firefox at universities

Summary: Microsoft continues to play hardball and it evades justice in the European Web browsers case

WE are fortunate to have a leaked copy of the Live@Edu offer. It shows what motivates some academic institutions to fall into this trap. It's pure greed. Now watch this from the news: [thanks to Terry Porter]

Sydney Uni students vent about Microsoft email system

University of Sydney students have taken to online forums to vent about the institution switching its email over to Microsoft’s Live@edu product earlier this month.

Microsoft released a statement today confirming the University had selected Live@edu as its default student email system.

"The University initially began looking at solutions as the old system offered limited email and online storage capabilities," Microsoft said.

Representatives of the student body and "other key academic and administrative stakeholders" across the University reportedly piloted the new email system before committing to it.

But it appears not all students are happy with the change.

Several hit the Bored of Studies forum and individual blogs to vent frustration, particularly at the supposed lack of features available to users of non-Microsoft browsers.

"Most of the settings pages for the e-mail service are completely unavailable in Firefox [or] Safari," an engineering student posted on the rantingfrog blog.

It's time for Microsoft to stop playing these games. It has become almost the rule rather than the exception.

In in other news, regarding Europe's investigation into crimes related to Internet Explorer, how about this?

Microsoft cancels oral hearing in EC browser-bundling case

[...]

So what happens now? Will the European Commission issue accelerate its final ruling — which more than a few observers are expecting will be in favor of Opera and possibly involve a hefty fine plus un-bundling remedies, based on the wording of the EC’s preliminary findings in the matter — with no further input?

Oiaohm, who points to this page from Microsoft's lobbying Web site, asks: "Why should a court case be allowed to work as advertisement? And why should a court case be run to the time line of the defendant?"

Does Microsoft want to ship an inherently anti-competitive operating system before the regulators get a chance to correct this? ⬆