UPDATE
Microsoft announced at 5 p.m. PDT today that IE 7 was now available in final form to all.
Here's a news story on the announcement, and here's PC World's extensive review of IE 7--as compared with the latest version of Mozilla's Firefox 2.0--by our own Erik Larkin.
ORIGINAL BLOG
So it looks like Yahoo beat Microsoft on its own announcement of the availability of the final version of Internet Explorer, Version 7.
Although the official release time of the IE7 final is still somewhat in the future (i can't say when as PC World agreed not to when we were briefed, and we hold to our promises), Yahoo earlier today unleashed this page on its Web site, apparently taking Microsoft by suprise.
The Yahoo page describes IE 7 as "simpler to get around with a new streamlined design", "faster and more organized surfing with Tabs", and "able to import all your IE6 bookmarks and favorites". The Web page also says the the version you download from Yahoo is optimized for use with the portal, including the Yahoo Toolbar, and makes Yahoo Search your default search engine.
Of course, PCW's discussed the new IE browser quite a bit in the past months. Our most recent look at IE 7 Release Candidate 1 was by Erik Larkin of our staff in late August.
We're poised to tell you more about the final version of Microsoft's browser, though not the Yahoo version, as soon as we can. Stay tuned.
