I’ve tried not to post about these stupid comments from Microsoft in Australia from last week. But I’m simply not strong enough and besides it happened on my patch (well in Oz anyway). What sort of idiots do they think we are? I don’t go in for Microsoft bashing and don’t want to look like I am engaging in this time honoured nerd activity but really!
- Internet Explorer isn’t facing a market share threat from Firefox. Excuse me? I guess that eWeek got it wrong. As must have silicon.com. I know lots of people who have shifted and these people are the sort of people who influence other, less tech focussed people. I’d predict that there will be more defections in the future.
- Tabbed browsing is not important. This is the killer feature in Firefox as far as average consumers are concerned. It makes life easier to not have to hunt all over the desktop to find that page you wanted to come back to from ten minutes ago.
- Internet Explorer is no less secure than any other browser. I guess that’s why the US government recommended a few months ago that another browser be used.
Please don’t lie to us or mislead us or put such an obvious spin on things. It makes you look shifty. It makes you think that you are fast and loose with the truth. It makes it look like you are stupidly arrogant. Why couldn’t these Microsoft honchos say that yes IE has had its share of security problems and they are working hard to fix them. They could also say that Firefox is a threat but a minor one so far with only a few percentage points having been lost. They could also easily say that tabbed browsing is a neat feature for some people (this is clearly the case). Honesty works.
P.S. I’ve met a few Microsoft employees in my travels and I must say that the further you travel from Redmond the more likely you are to find arrogance and a belief that because they work for MS they must be right. Its a pity that the head of Microsoft in Australia appears to exhibiting these symptoms.