Internet Explorer 8 Delayed Until 2009 204
Barence writes "Microsoft has confirmed that Internet Explorer 8 will not be officially released until 2009. According to a blog posting on the Internet Explorer 8 development site, a release candidate of the browser will be released in the first quarter of next year, to be followed by a final release at an unspecified date. This news comes on the same day that Google is considering bundling its Chrome browser with new PCs. Will the IE delay and Google's tactics help to steer users in Chrome's direction?"
how (Score:5, Insightful)
does a company with so much cash and resources is unable to release a good browser is beyond me
must be all the bureaucracy or some sort of internal politics
IE does so much harm to microsoft's image, are they just blind in the Death Star to notice the bad will being generated?
Ummm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not massive news as it is Late November in 2008. Meaning if IE 8 was release it would have to be released within 6 weeks. Heck it would need at least that much time in the RC levels just to make sure things are kinda going smooth.
Nothing new (Score:2, Insightful)
This is how MS marketing operates.
1. Hype what you are working on like it is coming out any day now in hopes to avoid customers switching to a competitor. :-)
2. Delay
3. Back to #1 until product is ready for testing
4. Release
Chevy is doing the first two steps with the Volt because they can't compete with hybrids ... or is it out now. Oh wait, gas prices are down now so people don't care about fuel efficiency right now.
Delay means very little (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:how (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not looking at the whole picture.
IE does a lot of things right, which no other browser does.
Centrally managing IE in a Windows Environment is a breeze - everything can be configured using Group Policies, a powerful tool that automates application customization.
Deploying and upgrading IE is also easy, as it utilizes the same Windows Update infrastructure that is already in place - using the free WSUS product in small businesses, or WSUS/SCCM in larger businesses.
IE also allows powerful intranet applications and custom security zones that can also be configured centrally - yes, this feature has been the source of many a security problem, but businesses don't buy computers because they're secure, but because they solve business problems.
Firefox, Opera and Chrome seem to have little to no interest in being used in corporate IT environments, where automated deployment and central management is key.
Funny, but not funny (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll never get back the hours and days I've wasted on browser differences and bugs, but the mirage that one day I won't have to waste that time is enough to keep me wandering through the desert with a little bit of hope.
Re:how (Score:5, Insightful)
Having a lot of money isn't necessarily going to speed up development. Developing complex software (which MS Internet Explorer is) takes time. You can use money to hire more developers, and that can speed things up, but, after a certain point, having more programmers will actually slow down development. You can use money to hire better programmers, but that has its limits, too. The same goes for buying faster hardware and better development tools. At some point, you just can't make things go faster, no matter how much money you have.
Re:how (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, modded as a troll it is. However, not so long ago we were calling microsoft evil for the way in which they proliferated their O/S and browser by having it bundled with new PCs. Now that Google is doing this it is suddenly ok? For me their priority should have been perfecting their browser (and it isn't as good as its competition yet) before engaging in the "evil" aggressive marketing tactics of its competitor. That is what I call 'getting it right'.
And I also agree with someone else who pointed out 2009 is only 6 weeks away. That's not so long for the successor to a browser that is still very competitive. Microsoft 'have it right' in this instance: make sure the successor is air tight before replacing a solid product.
Re:how (Score:1, Insightful)
>Now that Google is doing this it is suddenly ok?
You must be new here.
Doubt it. (Score:1, Insightful)
Will the IE delay and Google's tactics help to steer users in Chrome's direction
I doubt it. Although IE has it's issues, Chrome has some real show stoppers and then there's the fact it phones home with shedloads of data about your browsing.
Re:how (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right. It's excellent in every way; except for rendering HTML.
Non-Techie (Score:3, Insightful)
horrible at JavaScript, HTML and standard compliance With Firefox, Opera and Chrome why would a sane person even want to use IE? IE still trails almost every other browser in JavaScript performance,
While IE may be crap, the average person is probably not tech-savie and is not aware of the alternatives or simply doesn't really care if the tool does the job. Don't be surprised how conservative people can be. In many way this is no different than your KDE user using Konquerer or your Mac user using Safari, while not considering the alternatives.
Re:how (Score:1, Insightful)
They didn't catch up only by coding a better browser. Making it a default part of the system surely helped things along too.
Also, the first IE was not built by MS anyway, it was NCSA Mosaic under a different name.
That being said: I really liked IE3 or IE4 on the Mac when it came out. It was simply a better browser than Netscape 2 or 3, which was bulky and slow. Web standards didn't count back then, so all people wanted was a browser that was relatively easy to use, and displayed most of the web somewhat OK. When IE5/Mac came out, it was at that point the most standards-compliant browser out there, IIRC. Too bad they axed that engine rather than use it as a replacement for trident.
But anyway: Microsoft tends to "catch up and kill" competitors by throwing wads of cash around, buying tech and marketing that straight to the top. Having to do stuff themselves often results in massive fail.
Re:how (Score:5, Insightful)
Ehm, you confused google and microsoft there.
Microsoft is the marketing company. Google is a product company.
Google sets industry-standards with their products (search, gmail...) and people flock to them because they are better, not because google markets them anyhow. Seriously, have you seen an ad for google search or google mail ever?
Microsoft puts out crappy products and forces them down the consumers throats through their OS monopoly and aggressive marketing.
Re:how (Score:2, Insightful)
Ehm, what exactly needs to be "centrally managed" about a friggin' Web-Browser?
Drank a bit much of the MS kool-aid lately, did you?
Firefox can auto-detect the proxy server to use and updates itself over the intertubes.
What more do you need in your "corporate environment"?
Re:how (Score:3, Insightful)
also, the problem with Microsoft's bundling was that they were abusing their monopoly. they used the monopoly Windows held in the desktop OS market to gain an unfair monopoly in the browser market. this included integrating IE into Windows (making it impossible to uninstall) and forbidding OEMs from bundling competing browsers with their systems. this was a clear case of anticompetitive behavior.
there's nothing inherently wrong or illegal with bundling software with hardware. Nero does it, Apple does it, AOL does it, Microsoft certainly does it, and so do countless other companies. saying that Google is being just like MS by bundling their software is just demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of the antitrust case against Microsoft.
Re:Google not serious about browser (Score:3, Insightful)
Google tries to reduce IE's marketshare - that's the reason they don't need to have a browser for Linux or Mac - on those platforms IE is nonexistent and irrelevant, respectively.
microsoft is not in a bad position, actually (Score:4, Insightful)
People are so down on Internet Explorer, and rightly so, that if they come out with something that is "competitive" with the other offerings, even if it isn't superior, it will be perceived as a huge win for Microsoft and likely win back much of the market share they've lost.
I'm basing this on the fact that many people will choose the "standard" (IE) unless there is a compelling reason to switch to something else. Especially corporate environments, excluding companies that are expressly anti-Microsoft (Apple, Sun, IBM, Google). So Microsoft doesn't have to provide a compelling reason to use Internet Explorer; they just have to ensure there are no compelling reasons to use something else.
Re:how (Score:3, Insightful)
Try running the new stuff before bashing it.
That said, I still do prefer Firefox (this post is written in FF 3.04) to IE7 and IE8 - mostly due to Adblock Plus. IE8 has gotten very close to FF otherwise.
Re:how (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:how (Score:1, Insightful)
>>This is part of the Apple popularly surge. Apple likes to say no to a lot of good features. As they realize if it is implemented the majority may suffer to make the minority a little bit happier.
This notion is intellectually bankrupt. Apple did not gain an extreme popularity boost because it catered to the whims of some small subset while ignoring the feature requests of a broader use base.
Apple gained a huge popularity boost because it started spending money on marketing.
Re:how (Score:3, Insightful)
To borrow the old emacs line:
IE is a great OS - what it needs is a decent web browser.
Re:how (Score:5, Insightful)
No, he's quite correct. Google get money from their advertisers. What they sell the advertisers is your attention.
Search and Gmail are not the "products" that Google actually sell* - they're bait to lure in the products that they sell.
* OK, they do sell Gmail for your domain as a product. But the vast majority of their income is selling your eyeballs to advertisers.
Re:how (Score:3, Insightful)
The basic fact of the matter is that Googles income is not being made off of the users of their tools such as Gmail or search, but is instead being made off of services being sold to third parties which will be exposed via those tools.
Its not a word game, its the basic truth - you, the end user of Gmail or search, are not a direct contributer to Googles income, but you are infact an indirect contributor. Google is selling exposure to *you* to third parties.
They just use nice shiny offerings to entice you to play ball.
The minute you stop paying directly for the services, and start paying indirectly for the services, is the minute you become the product - if Google was not relying on income from advertisers, Google would otherwise be charging *you* for usage.
I also wouldn't call it a fairly novel approach - people have been doing it for years.
Re:how (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because a product is free doesn't mean you're not a customer.
Re:how (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:how (Score:4, Insightful)
Product Prod"uct\, n. [L. productus, p. pr. of producere. See Produce.] 1. Anything that is produced, whether as the result of generation, growth, labor, or thought, or by the operation of involuntary causes; as, the products of the season, or of the farm; the products of manufactures; the products of the brain.
The only thing my definition doesn't seem to fit is your narrow one that you are trying to foist on other people to win your own perceived 'argument'.
Get over it - the user is the product Google sells to advertisers through exposure to adverts. Google creates that product by offering other things to users - the specific userbase for its advertising service is a result of Google specifically engineering it into existence, hence it is a product of Googles labors.