Opera CTO Hakon Wium Lie claims Microsoft is breaking the law by aggressively updating Internet Explorer 8 and automatically making it the default browser.

Lie is particularly cross at Redmond for labeling IE8 as a "high-priority update" in Windows Update. He claims this makes it easy even for tech-savvy users to dump Firefox or Opera and stick with IE8.

Users who accept the "express" download without reading the fine print might not know that the update establishes IE8 as the default browser. "I believe this is both illegal and immoral," says Lie.

While it might be annoying, it's really not like Microsoft is deleting Firefox or Opera, and this is surely not the first time we've seen similar practices.

More here.