Norwegian software firm, Opera, has filed a complaint to the European Commission against Microsoft for anti-competitive behaviour by bundling Internet Explorer packages with their programme. Opera have also said that Microsoft have refused to obey web standards making it impossible for browsers to be interoperable.

Microsoft have stated that putting IE into their packages have made it more beneficial for users. However, the EC have received the complaint from Opera and have further stated that they will investigate into this carefully. The complaint had claimed that the bundling of IE with Microsoft have put them in an unfair advantage above every other software and making competition much more difficult.

Opera have said that it wanted the EC to make Microsoft separate IE from Windows and offer alternative browsers on new PCs pre-installed to their software. They have also stated they wanted Microsoft to be forced to follow standard web specifications, as opposed to their own unofficial standards.

Microsoft have responded by claiming that IE have been part of Windows for more than a decade maintaining that the inclusion into their own packages have benefited users, but also are willing to cooperate with any enquiries. Microsoft have been accused in the past regarding the bundling of Windows Media Player into their own Windows package. The battle against the EC was long running, resulting in Microsoft paying out £343m in fines.

Approximately 80% of web users use IE and Opera is believed to have a 1-2% market share of web users. In recent years, Microsoft IE has been dented by the success of Firefox. Firefox has been the most successful net surfing programme rising in as the second most popular browser; Firefox was the first browser to introduce tabbed browsing and has recently included a new session restore on Mozilla Firefox 2. Internet Explorer remains the most popular browser with rival Firefox used by approximately 15% of the Market and Apple Safari by 5%.