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Microsoft may have hoped it could resolve its browser bundling case by giving in to the European Commission’s (EC) ‘ballot screen’ demands, but that fix is proving easier said than done.

While two of Microsoft’s leading European adversaries have generally praised the idea of letting users choose which popular browser they’d like to set as the default the first time they fire up a new computer, those same parties now complain that the proposal as presented by Microsoft is too complicated to work.

“If the Microsoft proposal is the one that’s chosen, we don’t think that will restore competition,” Hakon Wium Lie, CTO of Norwegian browser maker Opera, told InternetNews.com. Opera’s complaint to the EC — the European Union’s (EU) executive branch — in 2007 started the case now pending that accused Microsoft of illegally bundling Internet Explorer with Windows going back to 1996.

Before the case came to a head, Microsoft executives decided it was the better part of valor to accede to the EC’s demands. The company thus adopted the EC’s suggested resolution of the ballot screen, which would provide a list of the most popular browsers on a Web page. Once the user made a browser choice, Windows would download the necessary software and make it the default browser.

However, in order to do that, a user would have to answer a series of questions and view various warnings, all of which adds up to as many as six mouse clicks.

“We believe that many users will be scared away by all the clicks and questions,” Ashwin van Rooijen, associate at law firm Clifford Chance, which represents the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS), an “interested party” in the case, told InternetNews.com.

“One of our developers wrote another ballot screen which took about two days, and one click will download the other browser,” he added. “This is entirely feasible for Microsoft to implement.”

Microsoft officials did not respond directly to questions regarding Opera’s and the ECIS’ complaints.

“In July, we made a new proposal to address EU competition law issues related to Internet Explorer and interoperability. The Commission welcomed our proposal and announced it would assess its effectiveness,” Microsoft spokesperson Kevin Kutz told InternetNews.com. “We continue to look forward to the next steps in this process.”

One analyst told InternetNews.com that he can see both sides of the current debate.

“Let’s be clear that anything that makes it more complex for the user makes it less likely that they will change browsers,” Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, said.

“[ECIS and Opera] have a valid point but, at the same time, Microsoft had to make the OS install any browser but it never said it had to be one click,” Bajarin added.

Whether the latest round of feedback slows the resolution of the case — which both Microsoft and the EC’s competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, have said they would like to have off the books — no one is predicting an early outcome. Kroes’ term expires at the end of October and she recently told the New York Times that she would like to “close that dossier.”

However, a source close to the case said that there’s no sign that the EC is rushing to judgment. Additionally, once a resolution has been negotiated it will need to be published for a month in the Official Journal of the European Union before it can become official, according to attorney van Rooijen.

A spokesperson for the EC’s competition directorate did not respond to an e-mail in time for publication.

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