Microsoft has begun a campaign to actively urge users of its 8-year-old Internet Explorer 6 browser to upgrade.
After launching IE 8 in March, Micosoft has concurred with critics that IE 6 is outdated. Many people have dropped the older browser, but the remaining users are often the tough cases--those who don't have a choice because of corporate computing policy or who aren't tech-savvy enough to realize there's a reason to move on.
This eBay 'Web slice'--basically a live bookmark in Internet Explorer 8--is part of Microsoft's effort to get people to upgrade from IE 6.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)It's this latter population Microsoft is targeting with a campaign that runs through June 2010 that touts its own IE 8 as a better alternative. The campaign's first visible elements are a video aimed at online holiday shoppers and a Web slice to promote daily deals at eBay. Web slices are basically live bookmarks that can show miniature Web pages in the browser.
"What we're doing with the outreach is help users understand how to protect themselves against social engineering threats that exist and to help people understand how Internet Explorer 8 puts people in control of their own privacy online," said Ryan Servatius, senior product manager for Internet Explorer. Security was one of the big problems with IE 6, and Microsoft now boasts that security features in IE 8 block 2 million malware sites a day.
According to Net Applications' statistics, Internet Explorer 6 is still the most widely used browser, with 23.3 percent share of usage in October, followed by IE 7 at 18.2 percent and IE 8 at 18.1 percent. The newer browsers are gaining on IE 6, but so are rivals including Mozilla's Firefox, Apple's Safari, and Google's Chrome.
Web developers often gripe about having to support IE 6, which doesn't support many modern features for more sophisticated Web sites and even applications. Microsoft acknowledges that it's holding back development of the Internet, too.
"The best thing a user can do to advance the Web is to help move people off IE 6," Servatius said.
Of course, many will upgrade to IE 8 by buying Windows 7. IE 6 was the browser that shipped with Windows XP, which remains entrenched, but there are signs Windows 7 is a more compelling successor than Windows Vista. That could help the corporate customers move away from IE 6, Servatius said.
"As enterprises migrate from whatever operating system they're using today to Windows 7, that's going to help deprecate IE 6," he said. "What we're doing is working both with consumers worldwide and IT professionals to help them understand what the benefits of a modern browser are."
LOS ANGELES--Although Microsoft intends to talk a bit about its plans for the future of Internet Explorer this week, the company won't offer preview code of its next browser, CNET has learned.
The software maker is also not planning to announce a move to the WebKit engine, as some had speculated.
Ray Ozzie, speaking Tuesday at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.
(Credit: Ina Fried/CNET)In his opening keynote at the Professional Developers Conference on Tuesday, Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie pledged that Microsoft will make Internet Explorer the absolute best Windows browser, but did not offer further details.
Microsoft is expected to talk more about its browser plans as part of Wednesday's keynote speech. During that talk, he is expected to talk about some--but not all--of its "focus areas" for the next browser version, a Microsoft representative told CNET.
The latest version of IE 8 was released in March and is also built into Windows 7. Despite the new release, though, Microsoft faces intense competition from Firefox as well as from Google and Apple.
In addition, Microsoft has struggled to get Internet Explorer users to move past IE 6.
It's been roughly eight years since Microsoft released Internet Explorer 6, but in many ways the company is still very much tied to the aging product.
Although Microsoft has released two major versions of Internet Explorer in the past couple of years, for many, the face of Internet Explorer is still IE 6 in all its tabless glory.
In large part, that's because many of Internet Explorer's users are the ones who tend not to change the browser that comes with their operating system--either because that's the type of consumer they are, or because they are working on a work machine in which they are not able to upgrade to a later version of IE or switch to another browser.
Amy Barzdukas, the general manager for Internet Explorer, said in an interview this week that Microsoft's perception is "being built by a browser that was fine technology eight years ago or a decade ago."
But that's frustrating, particularly since Microsoft has invested a fair amount of effort in the last couple of years trying to rebuild IE after letting it languish for several years. Microsoft added things like tabbed browsing and a phishing filter back with Internet Explorer 7, which debuted in October 2006, and earlier this year launched Internet Explorer 8, with anti-malware features as well as a private browsing option and improved standards support.
Even with that work, though, IE 6 remains not only the most widely thought of version of Internet Explorer, but also the most widely used version of the browser, at least by a narrow margin. According to Net Applications, IE 6 accounts for 27 percent of the browser market, compared to 23 percent for IE 7. Microsoft's new IE 8 has more than 12 percent of the market, while Firefox 3.0--the most widely used version of that product--has 16 percent (See chart below).
(Credit:
Net Applications)
Overall, Microsoft has been losing ground for several years to Firefox and other browsers. After reaching near ubiquity in the post-Netscape era, IE's global market share is now less than 70 percent. However, Barzdukas is hopeful that the trend is starting to shift with the release of IE 8.
"To the extent that IE was losing share over the winter, any rate of loss has substantially slowed since we came out with IE 8, and in some geographies IE overall has actually gained significant share," Barzdukas said.
One of the biggest things that could help Microsoft, Barzdukas said, is if more people understood that there were better browser options available from Microsoft. She has taken part of that task upon herself, making a pest of herself when she is at friends' houses for dinner--checking to see what version of the browser they are using.
A growing chorus of Internet users have asked Microsoft why, if it really wants people to move to IE 7 or IE 8, it doesn't just end support for IE 6. After all, there have been plenty of calls for the death of IE 6, particularly from Web developers, who are weary of the work required to make their sites work in multiple versions of Internet Explorer, as well as Safari, Firefox, and other browsers.
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Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system is still playing second fiddle to XP with business users, with more enterprises confessing to checking out the unreleased Windows 7 OS than its predecessor.
More than half (58 percent) of businesses using Microsoft technology are "exploiting" Windows XP compared to just 4 percent for Vista, according to the "reality checker" research by the Corporate IT Forum (Tif).
Tif's reality checker surveys help its members quickly compare the progress and position of their companies' IT against the technology choices of other members.
The group also found that 35 percent of organizations describe themselves as "not yet interested" in Vista.
The OS most people appear to be developing or piloting is Windows XP, with 12 percent of businesses saying they were doing so compared to 5 percent for Vista.
Interestingly more businesses said they're currently investigating or analyzing Microsoft's next scheduled OS, Windows 7 (30 percent), than Vista (14 percent).
In contrast, 7 percent of businesses even said they're still exploiting Windows 2000, although 19 percent said they are currently replacing or "sunsetting" it.
In April, research showed that Vista uptake among businesses was slow during 2007, although a quarter of businesses said they planned to upgrade in 2008.
The main reason given by Tif members for not moving to Vista was a lack of business requirement to do so.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's latest browser, Internet Explorer 7, is having a similar battle with its predecessor, IE 6, with a fifth of respondents saying they're not yet interested in the newer version of the application.
Almost two-thirds of businesses surveyed (65 percent) said they are exploiting IE 6 compared to 4 percent for IE 7. However, 14 percent said they are currently piloting IE 7, with the same proportion using it in isolation.
Almost a quarter (23 percent) said they are analyzing and investigating IE 8, which is currently available in beta form.
Click here for the full results of the Tif reality checker survey.
Tim Ferguson of Silicon.com reported from London.
Microsoft has informed some of its partners that it has had to delay Windows Mobile 7, a much anticipated update to its cell phone operating system.
Although Microsoft has not publicly said when to expect Windows Mobile 7, partners who had expected to have a final release in their hands by early next year have been told now that it won't be ready until the second half of next year, sources told CNET News.
The delay is a significant blow for the software maker, which has been counting on the next version of Windows Mobile to enable devices that better rival Apple's iPhone. Among the features widely expected to be part of the release is advanced gesture recognition, perhaps along the lines of the iPhone, but possibly also using the camera as a means for reading gestures. Microsoft's Tellme unit, which focuses on speech input, has also been working on Windows Mobile 7 features.
Windows Mobile 7 is expected to be a dramatic improvement over 6.1, shown here, but when will it arrive?
(Credit: Microsoft)The delay also comes amid stepped-up competition. Google is preparing Tuesday to launch the first phone running its Android operating system, while Apple has its updated iPhone 3G, and new models are also debuting from BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.
Microsoft, for its part, declined to comment on its plans. In an interview, group product manager Scott Rockfeld noted that CEO Steve Ballmer and mobile unit head Andy Lees did meet with 17 of the company's largest cell phone maker and carrier partners.
"They all expressed their excitement of what we are doing in the short term and the long term," Rockfeld said.
Microsoft is not expected to have a major update to its core operating system ahead of Windows Mobile 7. However, other improvements are expected to debut sooner, most notably an improved browser that brings the rendering engine of Internet Explorer 6 onto Windows Mobile. That update, still expected this year, should pave the way for Windows Mobile phones to display rich Web pages, including those that are home to Flash content and Ajax applications.
In addition, a number of carriers and handset makers have been working with Microsoft to add new touch interfaces and other features, separate from Microsoft's operating system updates. The T-Mobile Shadow was one of the first devices to benefit from such work, while more recent products from HTC also have their own custom interfaces above and beyond those included in the most recent version of Windows Mobile.
"Customers don't have to sit back and wait," Rockfeld said. "There's tons of stuff coming from us and our partners."
Rockfeld also tried to make the case that Microsoft's business model is friendlier to hardware makers and cell phone carriers than those of rivals, including Google.
"The thing that they are trying to do is they are trying to own the services," Rockfeld said, saying that is a move that has plenty of carriers worried. "They don't want to sit there and just become a dumb pipe."
Microsoft, he said, is willing to work with carriers to power their own services. "We're happy sharing the limelight," he said.
As for Windows Mobile 7, Microsoft has said very little publicly. Ballmer did make reference to it in a speech to enthusiasts in April.
During the speech, he talked about how Windows Mobile would outsell Apple and RIM during 2008. He then added: "And I think that certainly this should be a good year for us for sales, but the work we're doing on Windows Mobile 7, which is the next major release of Windows Mobile, not just in the Windows Mobile team, but across Windows Mobile, in Silverlight, the development platform, the e-mail, the back-end, I think you'll continue to see that as an area of major excitement and innovation for the company as we move forward."
SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft still isn't quite ready to release its new mobile browser, but I did get an advance look at Internet Explorer 6 for Windows Mobile at a Microsoft event Wednesday night.
The biggest benefit will be the fact that it is the full IE 6 rendering engine, meaning that any page that renders properly in IE 6 on the PC should do just fine on Windows Mobile. Tim McDonough, a senior director in Microsoft's Windows Mobile unit, showed me the browser running the standard MSN home page.
The current version of mobile Internet Explorer, seen here, leaves a lot to be desired. A new version, based on the same rendering engine as Internet Explorer 6 for the PC, promises Flash support and other improvements.
(Credit: Microsoft)I saw the browser running on Windows Mobile Standard--meaning on a non-touch-screen device. The browser makes good use of a D-pad controller to go from link to link, but it's still not as elegant as on a touch screen. I'll be interested to see how the browser works on a touch-based Windows Mobile device, but am still not expecting navigation to be up to the iPhone level.
Navigation may be better on the iPhone, but IE 6 will have some advantages, such as full Flash support.
"The market today is really at 'Can I see a page?' Very quickly we're getting to 'Can I do something?'" he said. "That's where we will really shine."
Another interesting option on IE 6 is the ability to quickly shift from a site's mobile page to its standard desktop version. Just because IE 6 can show the full site, doesn't mean that's always what people want. It's particularly true in Europe where even so-called "unlimited" data plans typically have data caps that can easily be reached by loading a lot of standard Web pages. IE 6 toggles between mobile and standard Web pages by sending a different user agent, depending on which page type a user wants to see.
McDonough didn't offer much of an update on timing for IE 6, except to say that "it's still this year."
That's left Windows Mobile device makers scrambling to try to better compete against Apple's browsing experience. To fill the gap, many are turning to Opera's Windows Mobile browsing, which offers better navigation and rendering than the current mobile Internet Explorer.
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