"Nothing in the design and implementation of the Ballot Screen and the presentation of competing web browsers will express a bias for a Microsoft web browser or any other web browser...."
That's the text of of the first sentence of the tenth paragraph of Microsoft's proposed settlement with the European Commission over its illegal tying of Internet Explorer with Windows.
The same proposal specifies the actual layout and design of the "ballot screen" that will be presented to approximately 170 million European Windows PC users sometime in the next few months and probably another 200-300 million users over the next 5 years.
Unfortunately, the proposed design of the ballot expresses a huge bias for one of the 5 browsers listed. The ballot, as described, will list the browsers in a static and alphabetical order.
And. It is common knowledge among usability experts, explained in quite solid detail and well cited by our very own Jennifer Boriss, that the first item in a list of choices will receive very disproportionate attention.
It is for this reason that the ballot cannot be static, regardless of criteria for ordering, and also be unbiased. The ordering of the choices on the ballot must be randomized. Failing to randomize those choices expresses a clear and strong bias to the first item on the list leading hundreds of millions of users to favor that item over all others.
There is simply no other way to eliminate bias. Anything short of randomizing is just shifting from one bias to another.
