Now it’s official that Windows 7 will be available worldwide on October 22, and it should be like Vista, but better. Well, Microsoft appears to have serious problems with the European Union and antitrust laws therefore the company has decided to offer a browser-free Windows 7 edition for Europe. Microsoft has confirmed that Windows 7 will be shipped without Internet Explorer 8 or other IE browser version.

According to the European Commission, software bundling is anti-competition therefore Microsoft will ship a special version of Windows 7 to Europe without Internet Explorer. The European version of the OS will be called Windows 7 E, and although Internet Explorer will not be bundled, Microsoft came up with a workaround to the antitrust laws and the company will offer Internet Explorer 8 separately to computer manufacturers and users.

This means that Internet Explorer will not be automatically installed with Windows 7, instead PC manufacturers and users will choose to install it. The European Commission was in talks with Microsoft about Windows 7 E and Internet Explorer, and it seemed like the OS developer could have added a stage in the initial process for users to select which browser they want installed. This means that users would have been prompted during the Windows 7 setup to install either Internet Explorer 8, and probably Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera etc., but this option was turned down by Microsoft.

Now that Internet Explorer is not coming with Windows 7, I think the whole Europe will use any other browser besides IE8. We’ll see how the browser share will look like when Windows 7 is released on October 22.