Monday, August 1, 2011

Put Some Chrome on Microsoft Explorer

A comment often made as to why Google still has the dominant share of U.S. search is the notion that "it's automatic," i.e. the default choice, the top of mind. Paradoxically, even though Internet Explorer still dominates Web browsing share, it does absolutely nothing to bring Bing to the top of mind. Google Chrome may have a somewhat too spartan look, but it seems work fast, and web pages compose themselves quickly, without the freezes and crashes that plague Explorer users. Firefox is, of course, another safe, crash-resistant alternative too.

Also, even though tabbed browsing is now commonplace, it seems to work a lot better in Google Chrome than it does in Explorer, which again seizes or freezes when too many tabs are open. Machine resources seem to get tied up faster in the Microsoft complex of Windows, IE, and Bing than they do without Internet Explorer in the mix.

It's probably way too costly and risky to expect that Microsoft would radically simplify the kernel of Explorer, but it should. It would require quite a paradigm shift in the way it deals with partner applications, but IE is still not an application worthy of a market leader.

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