Opera and other rivals are smiling as regulators win promise on choice and end Microsoft antitrust investigation.

LONDON — Antitrust cases in Europe can go on forever, but Microsoft‘s spat with the European Union over the bundling of Internet Explorer into Windows has finally come to an amenable end.

The E.U. is dropping antitrust charges against Microsoft after the software giant agreed to give European buyers of Windows a choice of a dozen other Web browsers like Mozilla’s Firefox, Google‘s ( GOOG – news – people ) Chrome or Opera through a pop-up “Choice Screen” when they first install the operating system. (The E.U. changed the label from “ballot screen,” which had been used by antitrust advocates and the European Commission.)

The Commission said this new commitment from Microsoft ( MSFT – news – people ) will be binding for five years, and the choice screen will become available in March 2010.

“We are pleased with today?s decision by the European Commission, which approves a final resolution of several longstanding competition law issues in Europe,” Microsoft said in an official statement on Wednesday.

The news comes just ahead of the departure of Neelie Kroes, the woman who coordinated the European Commission’s case against Microsoft as competition chief. Joaquim Almunia replaces her in January. Kroes has been at the center of a growing debate over the way the European Commission aggressively prosecutes companies on antitrust or cartel grounds without putting its case through a court first. (See “Taming Europe’s Watchdog.”)

“Today is a day when we can celebrate,” said Hakom Wium Lie, the chief technology officer of Norwegian software company Opera, which spearheaded the browser case against Microsoft after it first lodged a complaint with the E.U. two years ago. (See “Opera’s Bruising Browser War.”)

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“This is beneficial for the Web. Users that would not otherwise know about the existence of our browser will know about Opera,” Lie added. “We started the case and worked hard on it for two years and are happy it’s been brought to a conclusion.”

Opera’s browser will be one of the 12 randomly placed in the choice screen. Microsoft had proposed in October that the rival browsers be listed in alphabetical order, but Opera complained that would give some companies an unfair advantage.

“Some of our concerns have been met,” said Lie. Those that remain: a security warning that will pop up for users once they select to download a rival browser, which Lie says is unnecessary and potentially off-putting. Another niggling factor is that the choice screen will only be available to Windows buyers in Europe.

“We think users all over the world can have this choice,” said Lie, but he added that Opera had no current plans to file other complaints. “I think we’ll see what happens in Europe, and how other people react to it.”

The European Commission said that Microsoft’s choice screen would impact 100 million European users of Windows operating systems, including users of XP, Vista, Windows 7, and their successors.

It added that each browser would be accompanied by information from the producer, to help consumers “make a free and informed choice,” leading to “greater competition between web browsers” and “more innovation in related products.”

Users won’t just see the choice screen when they first install Windows. If Internet Explorer has been set as a default browser and the user has chosen to “automatically accept Windows updates,” they will also be automatically directed to the choice screen.

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