I never thought I’d see the day:
Reversing a longstanding Microsoft policy, Bill Gates said Tuesday that the company will ship an update to its browser separately from the next major version of Windows. A beta, or test, version of Internet Explorer 7 will debut this summer, Microsoft’s chairman and chief software architect said in a keynote address at the RSA Conference 2005 here.
The way I see it, there are two main reasons for the change. First and foremost, Longhorn is taking too long. Service Pack 2 went a long way to fixing the security issues present in IE, but not far enough. The last thing Microsoft needs right before a Longhorn debut is a major security flaw with IE. Thus it makes sense to fix the security problems ahead of time – or at least try to.
The second reason is Firefox. There is no question that the browser has made significant inroads into IE’s market share, and so it only makes sense from a business perspective for Microsoft to respond. I just hope they don’t focus solely on security – it would be nice to have IE standards compliant.
Either way, this is good new for Windows users!
Read: CNET News.com
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