Two-and-a-half years after Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft’s next entry in the increasingly competitive Web browser market, Internet Explorer 8, is ready to go. The final version of IE8 is due to be available at 9 a.m. Thursday here.
A new, modern browser couldn’t come a moment sooner for Microsoft.
Internet Explorer’s share of the Web browser market has steadily eroded from more than 90 percent in late 2004 to less than 70 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to data from Net Applications. In that time, Firefox has skyrocketed from about 4 percent to more than 21 percent of the market. Apple’s Safari browser has also increased from less than 2 percent to more than 8 percent of the market.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer drew attention to the issue during his February strategic update with Wall Street analysts.
“[W]ith IE8 we are very focused in on a set of technology marketing programs, et cetera, to regain browser share,” Ballmer said. “We think that browser share is important. Browsers are not commodity. Browsers are key features of operating systems, and we have a lot of work that we need to do in that dimension.”
Microsoft has packed a lot of new features into IE8, some of which even have Firefox cheering.
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