EU-version of Windows 7 will come without browser

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by Letum

I expect companies to do what ever is good for competition and thus good for the consumer.

That kind of thinking is the fastest road to monopoly and oligopoly you can take besides simply nationalizing an industry.

While it sounds rational enough on the surface, the reality is that instead of barring companies from the power to create a monopoly, you just opened the door for them. Business' single favorite method of creating a monopoly is to use the power of the state to do it.
In the most common cases, businesses help legislatures to establish strict sets of regulatory, licensure, and legal standards for their own industry, shutting out a good deal of would-be entrepeneurs who cannot compete for lack of capital. Even when these entrepeneurs secure enough investors to get started, the state punishes them heavily by exacerbating their overhead costs through taxation.
Is it any wonder so many new companies fail so quickly? Of course, big business with a place secured by the state is always there to pick up the pieces afterwards if there is anything of value.

Another common usage of the state is for subsidization and penalization of the competition. Especially international competition. Who is always at the forefront of efforts to 'protect' national interests and jobs? All they really want to do is gain an unfair advantage over competitors. The same company that lobbies heavily to protect jobs through subsidization or tariffs will gladly cut or export ten thousand jobs the next year if that is deemed necessary to maintain healthy profitability.

Of course, there are thousands of other ways that business takes advantage of the state at the expense of the consumer and the taxpayer every year, not just these, but the point is that once you give government anything other than very strictly limited power over business in any capacity, you give business power over the state, especially in a democractic government and doubly so in multinational legislatures. The desire to guide the actions of the free market is a pandora's box that is not easily shut once it has been opened.
It is best to limit the state's power over business to the judicial realm, punishing fraud, theft, breach of contract, false advertising, harmful products, workplace abuses, and the like (only after they have been committed). While that still leaves a crack for business to exploit, it is a very small one. The threshold that must not be crossed is proactive government interference in the market.

In this particular case, Microsoft's most likely response will be to simply make their OS more expensive for consumers in the short term. In the long term, I have no idea what machinations they may put in place, but I assure you that they will totally sidestep the intent of this legislation.
Like bureacrats and politicians, the sole reason for my professional exsistence is not to evaluate potential market strategies for Microsoft.
However, the best thing to do imo, is to simply let Microsoft's natural monopoly run its' course, and give it no cause to intervene in state affairs. If people begin crying out for an alternative where none is to be found due to lack of competition, the state can always fall back on punitive trust-busting measures.

Perhaps you still see things differently, but I invite you to consider the wisdom of letting an entity that is almost universally detested for being incompetent, slow, corrupt, and inefficient, match wits with the best and brightest that private industry has to offer. I can assure you that business will beat the state every time and establish a shadow (and sometimes, overt) plutocracy, unless the state steps in and runs business entirely, which is tantamount to national fiscal suicide.