Yesterday I posted 4 things Internet Explorer could have to quiet Firefox thunder and today I visited the official Internet Explorer blog, which is a bit sparse and lacking in the blog post area, but whoa! Check out comments like these — that don’t seem to have been edited:

“I can’t think of a competitor (even a free one) that MS has failed to crush. If Firefox looks a threat (and it *does not* at the moment) MS will improve IE in a matter of months. At the moment Firefox attracts open source crazies and web developers who like to have public wet dreams in any forum they can find about the day Firefox has a substantial market share. There’s no good evidence their randy Firefox dreams are anything more than an unrealistic fantasy. There’s plenty of evidence that MS can win a browser war. In fact, I believe they’ve already won one where the competitor had substantially more than a couple in every hundred users.” — Matt

Zach sticks up for Microsoft too, explaining what the average user really cares about:

“They do not like instructions, they do not like thinking about it, they do not care - its a stupid tool to get them to a webpage to check some scores, post on a forum, or check out some porn. Its a browser, they know how to use, and thats all they care about it. IE does a wonder job at keeping it simple - the others do not.” — Zach

LAH disagrees that the notion that average users don’t use Firefox:

Okay again, people are saying normal people would never consider firefox. I beg to differ. I know the university in this town (Northern Illinois University) actually HAS firefox installed on its computers in its public labs. Over 20,000 students attend this university. Most of them have used the computer labs at some point. The average student here is not a computer geek, but still has to use the internet and write papers. You don’t think any of these people will decide they like firefox?

Jim points to something interesting:

Just spotted this, in case anybody wants a laugh:

http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/ProductFeedback/
ViewWorkaround.aspx?FeedbackID=FDBK10939#1

It seems even Microsoft’s own websites are recommending that we install Firefox now

Kudos to Microsoft and what they’ve done for embracing blogging and letting the opposing voices speak up. It’s definitely on the right track.

This morning as part of my weekly 2-fer Tech Tuesday at Kblogger, I recommended Firefox as one of today’s two downloads. Towards the end of that part of the post, I referenced reasons why people might want to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox. The Internet Explorer blog with its more liberal blog editorial policy is a reason, albeit a small step, for people to stay.

Currently I use Firefox about 60% of the time and IE 35% of the time. I don’t see a day in the near future where I’ll stop using IE altogether.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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