Comment Articles

Why I dumped IE

Charles Cooper CNET News

Published: 01 Oct 2004 15:10 BST

I've always been impressed with how taken Microsoft's execs are with their technology. With a nearly $8bn R&D budget, you would expect that much of what Microsoft cooks up in its labs should be quite good. So why hasn't the Web browser substantially advanced since the end of the browser wars?

Microsoft has a couple of pat answers. One is security.

"Customers have told us, 'Please try to minimise the number of nonsecurity changes... so we can deploy security patches without problems,'" said Gary Schare, who runs security product management for the company's Windows division.

And if it's not security, then it's Longhorn.

"Certainly, innovation in the browser is a high priority," according to Schare, who says the plan "is to innovate with the Longhorn release."

As a former president used to say, let me say this about that. Microsoft will never admit this in public, but the core explanation is the absence of a hard-charging rival to keep it honest.

As a card-carrying member of Cynics International, I don't buy the argument that users will enjoy a wonderfully rich Web experience with Longhorn if only they'll wait just a little longer. The best "guesstimate" for Longhorn's already delayed arrival is 2006 -- at the earliest. Why Microsoft can't speed up its corporate metabolism to ship a better browser update before then remains a mystery.

On the security front, Microsoft has clearly had its hands full. Fixing the myriad holes in Windows and Internet Explorer is no small job. But why should that prevent Microsoft from offering sensible improvements to the browser, such as the inclusion of dynamically updated content from RSS feeds a la Firefox? Beats me.

Microsoft could also help out many developers by doing a better job offering support for CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, a Web standard increasingly important to design professionals. The company's defenders argue that Internet Explorer was out first with a decent CSS implementation but that Microsoft was left in an awkward spot after the standards subsequently shifted. You couldn't easily muck with the early implementation because that would wreak havoc with tens of thousands of Web sites.

Microsoft will never admit this in public, but the core explanation is the absence of a hard-charging rival to keep it honest. Netscape's removal from centre stage was the worst thing that ever happened to Internet Explorer because it allowed Microsoft to put Web browser development on cruise control.

Microsoft still holds more than 90 percent of the browser business, not to mention a desktop PC operating system monopoly that affords it special advantages against wannabe rivals. But for the first time in a long time Microsoft is losing share of the browser market -- albeit only a couple of points so far -- to the likes of Firefox, Safari and Opera -- and maybe even Google in the not-too-distant future.

Maybe this only marks a brief interruption in the company's unparalleled dominance. Microsoft surely remains the odds-on favourite, but I have a hunch more and more computer Web surfers have become as fed up as I am with the status quo.

Charles Cooper is the executive editor of commentary at CNET News.com.