Dear Microsoft: It's Time for Internet Explorer, Powered by Firefox
Dear Microsoft,
It's been an uncommonly newsy time in Redmond. You've got the ongoing developments in Microsoft's attempted takeover of Yahoo. There's your announced intention to go gaga for open source. Then just this weekend, the blogosphere has been abuzz over your impending private beta of Internet Explorer 8.
I've been rolling all these tidbits around in my mind, along with the recent news of the five hundred millionth download of Firefox, and I've come to a startling conclusion: It might make sense for you to discontinue independent development of Internet Explorer and launch a new IE that's built on top of Firefox.
I don't mean that as a Firefox fan, I wish you'd do it--I mean that it might be a savvy move on your part. One that would make Microsoft more successful on the Web.
OK, lemme explain...
Back during Browser War I, you poured so many resources into building up IE and damaging Netscape that it got you into legal trouble. As far as any of us on the outside could tell, your motives were based on the notion--which seemed logical at the time--that the company that controlled the browser would control the Internet, or at least have an awful lot of power over it.
That turned out not to be true. At its height, IE gobbled up something north of ninety percent of the browser market. What did it buy you? Mostly heartache and pain, as far as I can tell. By taking on responsibility for most of the world's Web browsing, you bore the brunt of most of its security attacks. It hasn't been fun for your customers, or for you.
Meanwhile, dominating the browser market didn't translate into Web domination--if it had, you probably wouldn't be trying to drop a giant wad of cash to pick up Yahoo. Google, the company that does dominate the Internet didn't have to build its own browser. True, it's an enthusiastic Firefox booster, but it gets far more traffic from IE users than from Firefox types. Google has become so gargantuan in part because it hasn't tried to tie its services to a particular browser...mostly, it does stuff that works well in whatever browser people happen to use. And that turns out to be the best recipe for success on the Web.
So it's not surprising that your interest in IE faltered in recent years. After version 6 showed up in 2001, five years passed before version 7 arrived--and when it did, it was a ho-hum release that mainly caught up with features that Firefox and Opera had boasted for years. With version 8 about to go into beta, the gap between 7 and 8 shouldn't be nearly as long. That's good.
But early scuttlebutt suggests that IE 8 will focus on better support for Web standards, rather than new end-user features per se. I certainly can't squawk about you making IE more standards-friendly, but it's a strategy that smacks of continuing to play catch-up with Firefox rather than giving anyone a compelling reason to choose IE over Firefox.
Which brings me back to my crazy idea: Why not simply give us an Internet Explorer that's powered by Firefox?
Think of the multiple upsides:
You'd get a browser that's already excellent at Web standards. No Web developer would have to struggle to make a site work as well in IE as in Firefox--from a standards perspective, they'd be the same darn product. You'd benefit from this, since future Microsoft Web services are all going to be good citizens in terms of standards, right?
You'd be making a gigantic commitment to open source that everyone can see, understand, and appreciate. It would be one of the biggest Microsoft news stories of all time, and you'd be showered with praise from all quarters. Internet Explorer would benefit from the open nature of Firefox development, which has already made Firefox a better browser than anything Redmond has produced. And you would, of course, contribute your development efforts back to the community, making Firefox better, too.
You could fret a little less about security. I don't mean to be too blithe here--if IE was based on Firefox, the world's hackers might well turn their attention to attacking all Mozilla-based browsers, thereby making plain ol' IE less vulnerable and Firefox more so. But at the very least, you'd have an army of smart people--the developers who contribute to the Firefox project--on your side. It's hard to imagine that a Firefox-based IE would be less safe than plain ol' IE as we know it.
You could worry a little more about features. Like I said, IE 8 doesn't sound like it'll offer knockout new features--but to be fair, you could say the same thing about Firefox 8, which is also in beta, and which also seems centered on under-the-hood enhancements. In other words, it's a kinda quiet time for browser innovation. If Firefox and IE were the same browser under the hood, both Microsoft and the Mozilla team might be able to devote more effort to coming up with cool new features.
You can continue to try to dominate the Web via the browser if you feel like it. A Firefox-based IE could still point to a Microsoft site as its home page, sending you millions of unique visitors. You could customize it to integrate with MSN Messenger or other Microsoft services. You could do nearly anything with it you could do with your own homegrown browser, including tying the browser together with any Yahoo services you end up owning.
You don't have anything to lose. For as long as there's a Windows, you're probably going to want to ship a browser with it. But at this point in its life, IE seems to be more of a responsibility than an opportunity for you. Dump plain ol' IE for one built on top of Firefox, and you'd probably save yourself money and hassles in an era in which your ambitions lie elsewhere.
So would you give the idea some serious thought, at least?
Respectfully,
--Harry
Okay, enough with the open-letter schtick, fun though it was to write. I don't think the scenario I outline above will happen--although it's not as wildly implausible an notion as it would have been a few years ago, and if I thought the chances of it happening were zero, I wouldn't have bothered to write this post.
So what's your take?
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I really like IE and although it has had it's attacks because it is a very popular browser or may even the only browser at times, I think it's still great. I hate Firefox and find it very much harder to work with even though it may be safer. And the rate things are going, I think we should all wake up a smell the coffee here, it's not the browser thats making the problems, it's the spyware, and malware, and the trojans etc. It's growing at a rate that we here in America alone, cannot keep up with it hardly. We need (all of us) to come up with a battle plan here and show our capabilities as a worthy opponite. The information that I have been getting is that alot of these attacks come from countries who just don't like us for what ever reason. I don't think we should bough down or stoop to the same level, but I think that as many people who are really great at programing and those who have a great talent in the Achitechture of the Web itself, can, and will show the world are goodne
ummm nice try bill but the gates family wont fool us spyware is the issue but if it werent for your company building bad products we wouldnt have to worry about it half as much
P.S. Firefox trumps IE in useability by FAR FAR FAR like outa this galaxy far you probably haven't used it lately if your saying that though
Firefox is allot better than IE!
Sure IE works better with web pages. That is only because IE comes with Adobe Flash, Shockwave Player, and the other stuff.
Firefox does not come with these add-ons already installed.
To install these add-ons, go to here. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:7
Here you can install all the add-ons to make all web pages come up.
Firefox is allot better than Internet Explorer. Especially the new Firefox 3 still in beta testing.(Beta 4) This version will block Trojans and worm! It will even stop you from going to a website that has malicious stuff on it.
Part of the problem is that people hang on to outdated operating systems and browsers, even though newer ones have better security controls, because they don't want to learn how to operate the new software, Whitty said. "The malware changes," she said. "If we don't change with it, they're going to win."
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,142125-c,onlinesecurity/article.html
I think it's a great idea, but I doubt it will ever happen. This would pretty much require Microsoft to say, "Hey Mozilla, we realize that you're better than us. We don't want to fight you anymore, so how about we work together? People will like us (Microsoft) more if we do!" I can't ever see Microsoft admitting something like that, even though most everyone knows how much better Firefox is.
I only use IE for one thing: Yahoo's internet radio. It doesn't work in Firefox, but I blame Yahoo for that. They've had the same message on there for years, "We're sorry, but we do not support the Firefox browser at this time," or something like that. I think they're just too lazy to get it to work. I know it requires programming and labor, but really, can't they recognize how popular Firefox is? The only reason IE may have more users is because Microsoft includes it with Windows. People don't switch to Firefox because they don't know about it, or don't know how.
In your first paragraph you refer to impending private beta of IE7 they should say IE8, right?
it is perfectly feasible right now, considering the IE shell has been stripped out from the Explorer shell in Vista.
Right now, I use IE7 65% of the time and Firefox 35%. They're both good with select add-ons. In IE7's case, you can just add IE7Pro for many of these functions. Firefox has the multitude of Greasemonkey extensions, though :-(
Opera is also a great option. But something tells me, Microsoft won't be too fond of those guys [and their tech. is proprietary]
The 4 major layout engines are:
Trident IE7 and IE6
Presto [used by Opera]
Webkit [used by Konqueror & Safari]
Gecko [used by Firefox, Epiphany, Songbird, Flock]
MS has apparently used Expression Web's new engine in IE8.
After this they can either continue with it, or start building on one of the other options. Apple has already "adopted" Webkit, Google supports Gecko. Opera hates Microsoft [at least right now] and Trident is old technology.
I think MS would just mess up FireFox. They have a talent for making things more complicated than necessary.
I think that this whole thing is way off base.
1,IE is nothing but a collection of files already present in Windows, which are broght together to function together only when IE is launched,
2. Just install Firefox, or Opera, or SeaMonkey browser, what ever, use what you want, and get on with your life.