In the war for browser superiority, Microsoft may be showing signs of yielding to upstarts from Mozilla, Opera and Google.
Over the past few years, Firefox has been slowly stealing away the numbers from Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft still holds the greater share of users, presumably thanks to legacy versions of its Windows operating system. However, despite some movement in Internet Explorer 7 and 8 (in beta now), Microsoft has been slow to play catch up, and users have been slow to upgrade.
It is enough for some to question whether Microsoft can keep up, and rather, why would they want to? There is no official word of Microsoft giving up on the browser. However, one can speculate that Internet Explorer is not a particularly valued Microsoft product next to its bread and butter software: the Windows operating system.
Unlike Windows, Internet Explorer is not a cash cow for Microsoft. It is also under the demands of a very diverse and rapidly moving web industry, one growing more crowded with browsers like Firefox, Opera and newcomer Google's Chrome.
Internet Explorer used to drive this industry due to its market relevance and now Microsoft representatives only have a hand in directing standards and features going forward as these other browsers bring more – a task growing far more arduous with the demands of AJAX web applications like Gmail.
Furthermore, browsers is a gateway to various security flaws and viruses, and protecting users from themselves via browser security protocols and fixes is an elephantine task. Microsoft has been under the microscope for the various security holes in its system and browser. Offloading this task to third-party browsers must seem pretty attractive.
Perhaps the greatest evidence of Microsoft letting Internet Explorer slip is Microsoft Windows 7 will not require an installation of Internet Explorer. This is a dramatic shift from Microsoft's usual operating procedure, relatively strong-arming customers to use Internet Explorer by integrating the browser in various elements of its operating system, such as file exploration.
Windows 7 not only removes that functionality, you can decide whether or not to install it on your system at all. This is a big win for browser competition, and perhaps a sign that Microsoft is ready to share the PC with the growing community.
