Firefox vs. Internet Explorer

Microsoft Employees Rage As Internet Explorer Ship Sinks

Posted on 12/29/2005 @ 16:39:49 in Browsers.

No way to build a market: No more Mac users. No more Dell users in the UK. HP's shipping Netscape. Internet Explorer 7 is the ultimate "me too" knock off. And nobody's madder than Microsoft employees and fans.

Microsoft employee Rory Blyth:

I think IE is horribly behind the times. When every other browser on the planet that's worth a damn supports tabbed browsing, it's just crappy that I still have to have different copies of IE open to have multiple sites open at once.

As of right now, my favorite browser on the planet is Apple's Safari.

Windows Live developer and creator of RSS Bandit, Dare Obsasanjo laments:

We haven't innovated in the browser for almost a decade. Given that Microsoft views IE as a defensive option to make Windows an enticing product, there is less incentive to make it the ultimate browsing experience as products whose bread and butter is the Web browser. Why do you think there are so many Google employees working on Mozilla?

Microsoft should either cede innovation in the Web browser to Mozilla/Google or make IE more than just "icing on the Windows user experience cake"by transfering the product to a team whose bottom line depends on browser innovation.

A bewildered ex-Mac IE developer Jorg Brown recalls a conversation with a Microsoft superior:

Over the whole sad journey, the single most surprising thing I ever discovered was from a small conversation that went:

Me: "Look, if it makes sense to devote dozens of people to WinIE, then surely it makes sense to devote half a dozen to MacIE!"

Higher-up: (confused look) "There aren't dozens of people on WinIE. WinIE had some great people on it! We need those great people on products that make money!"

Me: "Then why on earth did we pursue IE in the first place? Just so that the DOJ would sue us?"

Higher-up: (confused look)

Some day I hope to get a proper answer on our motivation to do WinIE and MacIE in the first place. It seems to be that we were scared of not having control of the HTML standard. And indeed, now that Firefox is gaining traction, Microsoft has added more people to WinIE again.

Epilogue: All of this made it a lot more easy for me to quit and go work at Google.

Microsoft Exchange partisan and leader of Orlando SBS IT Pro Association, Vlad Mazek, rages:

There is a 0 day exploit of another Microsoft file format that makes your Windows XP system wide-open for hackers if you made some bad decisions. On top of those is still using Microsoft Internet Explorer to surf the Internet - what in the world are you thinking? How many times do you have to stab yourself to bleed to death? If you know the answer to that please download Firefox today and say goodbye to IE-borne online threats.

The IE team dropped all development of Macintosh version of IE, then outright said it would not develop anything for XP anymore and everyone would have to upgrade to Vista, then they slacked away on security work and instead focused on visual issues while they got spanked on features by Firefox (which is why I switched). The Internet Explorer team needs to be punished, severely, for slacking away and compromising your computer and data security. This is not the case with almost any other Microsoft product. Will Bill fix it? Not as long as you continue to take it and not vote with your feet or at the very least tell them you are not happy with the risk they are placing on your computer.

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