The European Union has dropped long-standing antitrust charges against Microsoft Corp. after the company agreed to give users of the Windows operating system a choice of up to 12 other Web browsers.
Under the terms of the deal with regulators announced Wednesday, Microsoft will avoid further EU fines if it provides a pop-up screen that lets European users — from March — replace Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or add another browser such as Mozilla’s Firefox or Google’s Chrome. Internet Explorer is used by a majority of global Internet users.
