[ Thanks to Maarten
Kooiker for this link. ]
“This week, several articles I read brought the
breaking news that the market share of Microsoft’s internet
explorer is shrinking to below 70% for the first time since 1999).
Internet Explorer gained a near monopoly, simply by forcing it to
the customers by bundling/integrating it with the operating system
Windows, and I believe this is the major reason why this browser
still holds such a big percentage of market share. Many people
simply use the browser they are given, unless there is an
alternative that has significant advantages.“On the other hand, apparently, the near-monopoly has made
Microsoft extremely lazy, resulting in a browser that does not even
meet the open web-standards, it is slow and has to catch up with
alternative browsers. The lack of meeting open standards is an
increasing frustration with web-designers and alternative producers
of web-browsers like Opera). Having to catch up with other browsers
is painfully clear when simply looking at tabbed browsing and
extensions”