The trouble started when issues became a mainstream concern, and ordinary Web users began to care that their browser and operating system were insecure. It made a kind of sense, in a way: the major commercial competitor, Netscape, was reeling, and Microsoft thought it had won control of the Web, so why bother spending money developing a browser?īut the market, of course, did not stand still. Microsoft even announced that future versions of the browswer would be completely tied to operating system releases the company would no longer ship browsers that worked on multiple Windows versions. The team that worked on IE was disbanded the focus was on servicing the browser-patching security flaws-rather than actually developing it, to make it a better browser. After winning the browser wars and vanquishing Netscape, Microsoft essentially gave up on making a Web browser. With the 2001 release of Internet Explorer 6, Redmond's browser peaked with a market share of over 90%.īut when you reach the top, the only place to go is down, and Internet Explorer has certainly done that. It was released into a market that was completely dominated by Netscape Navigator, but through a combination of aggressive pricing, regular releases, stability, performance, and standards compliance-not to mention being bundled with Windows-Internet Explorer first matched, and then eclipsed Netscape's market share. Once upon a time, Internet Explorer ruled the world. Microsoft's browser has come a long way since its heyday. But it has its work cut out if it's going to return the Redmond browser to the unassailable leading position it once had. With Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft is imploring us to "unlock the beauty of the web," and indeed, IE9 is a fast and attractive Web browser. Coming after four developer-oriented preview releases, the new browser brings a streamlined user interface and a core that is more standards-compliant-and orders of magnitude faster-than any previous version of Internet Explorer. Microsoft today released the first beta of Internet Explorer 9.
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