Why is this voted up? This is just irrelevant and incorrect Microsoft bashing. Microsoft didn't take IE out of all copies, just EU copies.
"Because of a recent European Commission anti-trust ruling, Windows 7's European version will not be integrated with Windows' Internet Explorer, meaning that a browser will have to be installed separately."
As I said, that line you quote, from this very article, is not true. That makes my point both relevant and correct "Microsoft bashing" and you, on the other hand, are just misled by the very PR spin I'm calling attention to.
Can you show me a link to this "ruling"? No you can't. Why not? Because it's not happened yet. And when it does happen, the EU has been pushing for the installation of multiple browsers with a choice at startup.
Removing their own browser from the Euro version was an attempt by Microsoft to head off that ruling. Obviously they felt that either a) people would be more likely to install Internet Explorer this way, and/or b) that the negative reaction could be skilfully deflected onto the EU.
Sadly, part b) appears to be working judging by our posts relative scoring at least, again I can only hope they're wrong about a) and this leads to a further increase in market share for non-Microsoft browsers in Europe.
Ah I misinterpreted your comment as "non-EU copies have IE so Microsoft wasn't forced to remove it everywhere". I see what you mean was that even in the EU Microsoft isn't forced. Having understood that, they were getting pretty hefty fines there and this along with other measures went somewhat to fixing that.
"Because of a recent European Commission anti-trust ruling, Windows 7's European version will not be integrated with Windows' Internet Explorer, meaning that a browser will have to be installed separately."