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Why I dumped IE

Charles Cooper CNET News.com

Published: 01 Oct 2004 15:10 BST

After months waiting for Microsoft to give me a reason to remain loyal, I finally dumped Internet Explorer for the Firefox Web browser last week.

At the office, my cubicle colleague -- a Firefox aficionado of long standing -- smugly greeted the news by asking me what took so long. But rest assured this is no small concession.

The short answer is I don't have a lot of time or patience to fiddle around getting my different applications to play nice. So when forced to decide between competing software alternatives, yours truly has nearly always gone with the Microsoft offering. For most Internet surfers, it's as if the calendar stopped in 1999.

Okay, I'm a wimp who takes the path of least resistance. I'm also less interested in creating the ultimate computing experience known to mankind than in making sure things work the way they should. That's the upside of sticking with a convicted predatory monopolist: You can assume a high degree of uniformity and application integration.

But after being tossed the gauntlet, I finally loaded Firefox at home. To my surprise, the product won me over in short order. I love its pop-up blocker, as well as the ease with which it accesses Really Simple Syndication feeds. I didn't use a stopwatch, but it loads fast and opens Web pages without a hitch.

I can't say the same about Internet Explorer (though Microsoft recently introduced a similar pop-up-blocking feature). Putting your finger on the reasons for the slow response is worthy of a Harvard Business study. In the meantime, it's useful to recall that Microsoft wasn't always so lethargic when it came to juicing up its Web browser technology.

Microsoft was a latecomer to the browser market and scrambled to catch up. Early on, the company stumbled and the first couple of attempts at a Web browser weren't any good. But this was a make-or-break proposition; Microsoft couldn't afford to let Netscape's Web browser displace Windows as the primary interface sitting on the computer between application developers and users.

By the third try, Internet Explorer had pulled even and later became the better Web-browsing application. The rest is history. Unfortunately for Web surfers, it's as if the calendar stopped in 1999.

Actually, that last statement is not fully accurate. There is one major change you can ascribe to Internet Explorer: The PC browser world is in much worse shape. Because management took so long to tackle Internet Explorer's security woes, Microsoft allowed virus writers to exploit vulnerabilities in the browser and wreak untold havoc on unsuspecting computer users.