] Opera gets US$12.75 million settlement from Microsoft
]
] Last week Opera Software (makers of the Opera browser for
] Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X) announced they had entered
] into a settlement with a large company, but did not name
] the company provide details on what the settlement
] covered. Now, sources are reporting that Microsoft is the
] party behind the payout. Opera had threatened Microsoft
] with a lawsuit over incompatibilities between Opera 7 and
] Microsoft's MSN.
] The incompatibilities were allegedly due to a
] browser-specific style-sheet sent to surfers browsing the
] MSN website with Opera, which then caused MSN to render
] improperly on Opera 7. If Opera identified as a
] Mozilla-based browser, the pages would render just fine.
]
] Microsoft in 2003 admitted that it had taken steps to
] detect different types of browsers accessing MSN and sent
] different Web page layouts to different products. But the
] company said its efforts were aimed at promoting
] standards compliance rather than at hurting products that
] compete with its dominant Internet Explorer browser.
] Microsoft said it has since stopped the practice.