Microsoft has announced it will release its Windows 7 operating system in Europe without its Internet Explorer browser.

The company is trying to avoid new EU fines after being earlier charged with unfairly using its operating system monopoly to squeeze into other software markets. It will now be up to PC makers to decide whether to pre-install Internet Explorer 8 or another browser on the computers they sell.

But the European Commission said it wanted to see choice of browser for consumers, "not that Windows would be supplied without a browser at all".

"Rather than more choice, Microsoft seems to have chosen to provide less," it said.

A European court will soon decide whether Microsoft had violated EU antitrust law since 1996 by tying the browser to its ubiquitous Windows operating system which is installed on most of the world's desktop computers.

A ''must carry'' option that would offer a menu of several browsers was better, the Commission suggested, because ''consumers should be provided with a genuine choice of browsers'' on the software that manufacturers install on computers.

It said Microsoft's solution would give no choice to the 5 per cent of consumers who buy Windows software in a stand-alone pack, as opposed to pre-installed on a computer.

In January, the European Commission said its preliminary view was that Microsoft had stifled competition in the browser market by packaging Internet Explorer and Windows together.

The antitrust investigation was prompted by a complaint from Opera, a rival browser, that was later joined in the action by Mozilla. Internet Explorer is the most popular browser worldwide but its market share has been under attack by Mozilla's Firefox and others. Opera wanted Microsoft to offer users a choice of browsers automatically when they used their computers.

Microsoft has argued that the browser is an integral part of the user's experience and should be bundled together with the operating system. It said users were free to choose another browser if they wished. It still plans to release its next-generation operating system worldwide on October 22, but said that computer manufacturers and customers in Europe would have to install web browsers of their choice.

"We're committed to making Windows 7 available in Europe at the same time that it launches in the rest of the world, but we also must comply with European competition law as we launch the product," Dave Heiner, deputy general counsel for Microsoft, said. "Given the pending legal proceeding, we've decided that instead of including Internet Explorer in Windows 7 in Europe, we will offer it separately and on an easy-to-install basis to both computer manufacturers and users."

Mr Heiner said Microsoft expected that stripping IE from Windows 7 would bolster its position in that it was not bundling software in order to suffocate competition. But the Commission is likely to continue its investigations and Microsoft to be hit with a huge fine, expected in some quarters to approach the record $1.49 billion fine recently levied on Intel.

"We will continue to discuss browser issues and other matters with the Commission," Mr Heiner said.

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