rogerd - 12:33 am on Feb 3, 2005 (gmt 0)

Assuming Microsoft paid off Opera, they no doubt did it because of antitrust reasons. Such an action by MSN could be viewed as a means of boosting their own near-monopoly browser. Absent some critical technical reason, MS would almost certainly have been in violation of antitrust laws.

A bank, on the other hand, has no obligation to permit equal access to all browsers. They could force you to use WF-Explorer if they wanted to... but would risk losing customers.