Thanks Dieter. Not so long ago, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) viewed its browser as being so key to its success that it went to court with the Department of Justice over the company's rights to bundle it with the Windows operating system. With Microsoft's marketing might behind it, and a price tag of free, Internet Explorer (IE) quickly grew to eclipse Netscape's Navigator as the No. 1 browser in market share.
Now, while Microsoft is continuing to add new features and functionality to IE, there is much rethinking internally at the company about how and where to position the product, according to a variety of industry sources close to Microsoft.
That's in part because IE isn't Microsoft's only browser. There's also the more consumer-oriented MSN Explorer, launched last October. And on the drawing books there is the more "knowledge-worker"-type interface that Microsoft is designing into its stealth Netdocs product.
|