Green Dam will not be mandatory, China says

In today's podcast: Green Dam will not be mandatory, China says; IE8 raises new antitrust concerns; and Dell may offer Linux smartbook.

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China said Thursday it will not force PC makers to bundle an Internet filtering program with computers sold in the country, backing down from a plan that stirred global controversy. China originally ordered all foreign and domestic PC vendors to pre-install Green Dam on new machines or to include the software on a CD-ROM. That mandate, issued in May, was indefinitely postponed just hours before it was slated to take effect last month. At the time, the Chinese government said it delayed the plan only to give PC makers more time to comply, but it did not set a new date for enforcement. China has insisted that the Web filter was meant to protect children from pornography, but the program was also found to block Web sites that mentioned sensitive political topics such as Falun Gong, a spiritual movement banned in China as a cult.

Microsoft's decision to make Internet Explorer 8 the default browser on computers where the user elected an express installation raises questions about the software giant's compliance with a 6-year-old antitrust settlement, a lawyer for some of the plaintiffs in the case said Thursday. Microsoft recently has changed the way IE8 is installed as part of a high priority update, in response to concerns raised by other browser vendors and plaintiffs in the antitrust case. But Steven Houck, a lawyer representing a group of states that sued Microsoft, called the company's actions "rather troubling," given that there were no default installation problems with IE7. Microsoft linking IE to the Windows operating system was one of the major complaints in the antitrust lawsuit filed by a group of states and the U.S. Department of Justice.

In an effort to expand its Linux offerings, Dell is researching new netbook-type devices and will soon offer netbook Linux OS upgrades, a company official said on Wednesday. The company is researching the possibility of offering new Linux-based mobile devices called smartbooks, said Todd Finch, senior product marketing manager for Linux clients, at the OpenSourceWorld conference in San Francisco. The company will also upgrade its Ubuntu Linux OS for netbooks to the latest version in the next few weeks. Smartbooks are netbook-type devices that are powered by chips designed by Arm. The devices mostly support the Linux OS and are designed for those who rely on the Web for most of their computing. Dell couldn't say whether it would ultimately offer a smartbook.

Microsoft on Thursday said that starting next year it will include Outlook in its version of the Office for the Mac platform, replacing Entourage, the e-mail and groupware application for Mac users the suite has now. The move will give business users of the Mac version of the suite more of the same features Microsoft already offers for people using Office on Windows, said Eric Wilfrid, general manager for Microsoft's Mac Business Unit, in a teleconference Thursday. Microsoft also will reduce the number of editions of Office 2008 for Mac from three to two when it releases Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Business Edition on Sept. 15.

...And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I'm Sumner Lemon in Singapore. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.