I'm speculating. I don't have any inside track scoop (but hey Robert Scoble, would love to chat with you if you wanted to talk about the future of IE, Wallop and newly acquired Groove :-) )
But I would bet that in the not too distant future we should see IE 7 from Microsoft. I can't imagine that the folks in Redmond are happy with this continuing trend.
Janco Associates found IE had 83.7 per cent of the market for this month, down from 84.85 per cent, while Firefox grew from 4.23 per cent to 10.28 per cent. Janco believes Firefox could take 25 per cent market share in the next quarter.
Now don't all of you OSS folks jump all over me. I love Firefox. Don't get me wrong. It's the browser I use each and every day, without exception. What's got me curious though (almost excited, might I dare say) is what might be brewing for IE over at Microsoft. There's no doubt, a new browser from MS will be out long before Longhorn sees the light of day - if not, I would think that Firefox will have bitten a sizeable chunk of the market. No doubt that IE will have features like tabbed browsing and integrated RSS feeds. Of course it will be more secure than today's IE (please, please, please). But what would really rock would be if MS open sourced IE and allowed people to build innovative extensions for it. For more details on Firefox's continued growth, check out the article over at The Reg.
Would love to hear from you readers as to what you think the next steps are for IE.
Why do you reference that hack Scoble? I thought you were an opensource supporter and yet you care what Scoble might have to say? His blog is nothing but a marketing PR front. You hurt your credibility when you mention him.
Posted by: krazyhorse | May 05, 2005 at 08:00 AM