Microsoft has had “passionate” discussions about renaming Internet Explorer to distance the browser from its tarnished image, according to answers from members of the developer team given in a reddit Ask Me Anything session today.
In spite of significant investment in the browser – with the result that Internet Explorer 11 is really quite good – many still regard the browser with contempt, soured on it by the lengthy period of neglect that came after the release of the once-dominant version 6. Microsoft has been working to court developers and get them to give the browser a second look, but the company still faces an uphill challenge.
Windows Phone faces the same problem. I’m fairly certain ‘a Windows phone’ just sounds dirty to many people, associating it with viruses and other issues from the past. Can’t blame them.
I think that many inside Microsoft have worked out that Windows & IE are brands that carry too much baggage, whilst Bing is more of a punchline than a brand.
Microsoft would do well to bin at least the Windows and IE brands. This is the sort of brave move that Satya needs needs to make to signify that this is indeed a new Microsoft, not the same old mammoth clinging to its sacred cows.
Microsoft sells an insane amount of Windows licenses and products every year and continues to make enormous piles of cash doing it. Dumping the Windows brand wouldn’t be a “brave move”, it would be an incredibly idiotic one that would surely earn him a pink slip.
I agree that dumping the windows brand for PCs would be stupid. THat said, Microsoft is targeting the home consumer market with Windows Phone (don’t know why they bothered when they could’ve grabbed the business world out from under RIM’s nose) and the Windows brand has a horrible reputation with home users. In that market, the Windows brand carries both unnecessary baggage and confusing implications. In the first case, people associate it with malware and gradual slowdowns, along with poorly-behaved drivers that will require a restart just to pring properly at best, and blue screen at worst (yes, this still happens). You can make the argument that none of these are, strictly-speaking, the fault of Windows and you’d be right, but that doesn’t change the situation as it stands. Most home users don’t want Windows, rather they suffer through and tolerate it because it’s what they can get easily if they do not wish to go the Apple route.
Secondly, Windows carries the implication that you can run all of your desktop apps on it. This was much worse with Windows RT on tablets. This introduced unnecessary confusion for customers and the Surface line flopped flat in its face as a result.
They’d have been better off to call their phone os something else, to avoid confusion and to try to build a new reputation in their target market.
Edited 2014-08-15 16:47 UTC
I know it’s a popular theory with some people that Windows users don’t actually like the OS but rather are stuck with it, or tolerate it, or have no alternatives. But the truth is there are alternatives and have been for years. Home users who truly don’t like Windows don’t use it. They find their way to OSX or Linux. It’s disingenuous to suggest that Windows doesn’t work great for tons of people. The idea that Windows is plagued with faulty drivers, slow-downs, etc is a bit silly at this point. Yes, you can find examples of poorly written drivers (which Linux users suffer from frequently if you’re to believe all the bug reports and postings on the official mailing lists). But, how does that number compare against all the people who experience the opposite – people who have no problems with drivers what-so-ever? Some people can’t accept that Windows 7/8 is not Windows 95/XP.
Aside of that, you said, “don’t know why they bothered when they could’ve grabbed the business world out from under RIM’s nose”, and I’ve wonder the same myself. I chalk it up to bad decisions by the leadership. I can’t say that Microsoft is in a great position with mobile but I’m not quite ready to suggest they should throw in the towel. Microsoft does employ some very intelligent people and I can tell you there has been many occasions where those people weren’t given the voice they should have, or whose ideas weren’t given enough consideration or evaluation, and it turned out to cost Microsoft. That behavior is how they got into the mess their in, but it’s the behavior of only a few. I believe they still have enormous potential if the right people are installed in the right positions of power.
If it was just a rename, then it would gather the same bad branding as people would ask “is it compatible”. If it is, then the bad branding will carry over. If it isn’t, then they’ll have to fight with Linux for the desktop market.
Either way, it’s a no-win situation for Microsoft.
IE could be done a little more transparently as nothing really relies on IE compatibility any more.
Fight with Linux for the desktop market? What world are you living in? Year after year Microsoft Windows completely dominates the desktop, while Linux occupies only a tiny sliver. It’s beyond me how anyone of sound mind can possibly think the Linux desktop is any kind of serious competitor here when facts and history simply don’t support that theory in any way.
Did you even read what I said?
What I said basically boils down to:
IF Microsoft creates an OS that is INCOMPATIBLE with Windows software, then they would essentially be competing with Linux for the Desktop.
What keeps Microsoft in the position you refer to is the fact that the older software is still compatible with newer versions of Windows. If they give that up, then they would lose that market advantage, and they would be in a worse position than Linux is currently in, having to get all their partners on board with converting the software over to the new OS, etc, etc.
Well, we’ve already seen where this goes – just look at Windows Store versus Apple’s AppStore or Google’s PlayStore. Microsoft just loses when they have to restart from scratch.
Maybe they should just rename the entire company
LOL
What a f-king trainwreck.
Maybe they should just buy AOL, merge it with what remains of MSN, and rename the company to AOL….
I’m just one guy, but the only way Microsoft could ever win be back would be to implement W3C standards to the letter in IE and to pull an Apple and completely rewrite Windows from the ground up using Unix.
“.NET Framework” is in the same boat. I hear that name, I immediately associate it with rubbish.
And that would surely turn it into a sexy framework.
Whenever I hear .NET Framework, I think about the tremendous army of undereducated developers that has grown over the last two decades, and how handing them a highly abstracted stack of software was not a good idea after all.
The further you get from the machine, the higher is the probability you’ll end up with crap software.
The exact same problem applies to Java too.
Also, that’s pretty funny how .NET sounds bad to many, while C# sounds great.
It never really was rubbish… just popular with subpar devs.
IMHO, they are simply rearranging the deckchairs.
Just try to think of a company/brand that has been more successful after a re-branding?
There ain’t many.
How is IE11 “quite good”?
Sure, IE renders pages fast now. But it has no single “downloads” window, it takes ages to launch, and the way it handles extensions aka BHOs is miserable. If a BHO doesn’t set an uninstall entry in “Programs”, IE can’t remove it, it stays there forever like a parasite.
Also, the BHO/extension ecosystem is miserable compared to Chrome’s and Firefox’s.
But did I say IE11 renders pages fast?
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.3.4; el-gr; LG-P990 Build/GRJ23) AppleWebKit/533.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/533.1 MMS/LG-Android-MMS-V1.0/1.2
IE takes a fraction of a second to launch and has been the fastest browser to launch since…forever. People often said that was because of the integration with the OS.
IE does have a single download window (since IE7 I believe) and it keeps downloading even when you close the browser (only recently implented in Chrome that would just close the browser even if you were downloading and loose all your progress before)
You have some other valid points, but I have plenty of complaints about other browsers as well. Instead of focussing on the negative, lets focus on the positive:
IE: Best for business with ActiveX, group policies and infinite backwards compatibility
Chrome: Best browser for home users because of super-update, sync, speed and standards
FireFox: Best browser for power users because of plugins
…something like “Binginator”
How about calling it Windows Xe? It worked for Blackwater…
I remember a lot of the paranoia over Internet Explorer from back when I used windows a decade ago.
People would see me with IE open and yell “Nooo! Close it. You will get a virus!”
Meh. It’s been unofficially called Internet Exploder for nearly 20 years, perhaps it’s time to make it official.
I will support the idea of renaming Internet Explorer.
Then make the other Internet Explorer completely separated from the Host OS(Windows).
The reason why IE is plague with IT nightmares its because you can’t separate Windows and IE.
They should make two browsers, one is the current IE and the other is a complete rewrite based on current open source technologies e.g. webkit or they can create their own web engine for that matter. The point is make a modern browser that will be able to compete with Firefox and Chromium/Chrome and make it multi-platform. If they should still subscribe to the notion of a Windows-only product, then I think that is going to be a failure product.
Edited 2014-08-16 05:16 UTC
Microsoft is a for-profit company. How exactly would writing a new cross-platform open source browser help them or their business model?
Serious answer: It would finally allow their enterprise products (CRM, SharePoint, etc) to run well on other Operating Systems
There is no other browser that is welded to the OS like IE. It’s a terrible idea and a perfect example of Steve Ballmer’s naive attitude about software and his arrogance about the Windows brand.
It’s just a browser. It should be separate like any app.
I agree with you but that doesn’t answer my question.
Why would Microsoft waste time & resources writing an open source IE replacement? It has to make sense on their end.
Yep, that would be as crazy as Google writing their own open source browser, building a successful low-cost Linux-based mobile product line around it, and then scaring their major competitor silly as sales explode.
Never happen.
It’s a common mistake people make to compare companies like Google & Microsoft, which are vastly different from the ground up. It’s as if some people don’t understand those companies operate with incompatible business models. That what makes sense and/or works for one may be completely counter-productive or irrelevant to the other. Crazy concept, I know.
They both develop and promote major web browser product lines. If people want to compare companies that develop and promote major web browser product lines, then of course they will compare companies like Google & Microsoft!
Disliking the outcome of that comparison doesn’t make it a mistake. Painfully insightful, maybe…
Yes, people will compare Google and Microsoft because people insist on comparing apples and oranges. It’s not insightful to completely ignore the differences in their core businesses & business models. On the contrary, it’s painfully ignorant to say both companies make a web browser therefore they’re comparable. Pirelli makes rubber tires. So does the Lego toy company. See the problem with that logic yet?
If you have to remove/ignore the most important parts of the picture for your point to make sense, there might be a problem with your point.
*sigh* It’s not this hard. I can’t imagine why you are unable to do this. Business majors, investors, and stock analysts do this all the time. Google is your friend (ahem).
Let me walk you through it in baby steps.
Web browser developers are most certainly comparable to the extent that their product lines overlap. I can readily compare Google’s web browser strategy to Microsoft’s – or to Mozilla’s, to Apple’s, and to the minor players’.
I can, for example, draw an analogy between Microsoft’s Nokia X Android Open Source Project-based phone line – intended (according to Microsoft’s own press releases) to draw budget smartphone buyers to Microsoft services such as Bing – to Google’s cross-platform Chromium open source-based browser strategy that draws web users to Google services.
Readily comparable, the major point of contrast here being that Google has been highly successful, while Microsoft failed and recently cancelled the Nokia X project. As I said, painfully insightful to certain Microsoft fans – but not at all difficult to do.
By that analogy, Microsoft could initiate a Nokia X-like strategy of building a cross-platform open source web browser that draws web users to their own services. They’ve already stated this as a strategic goal, so it’s not difficult to imagine.
Most people don’t need to have this spelled out in such painful (to use your word) detail – they “get it” from the original poster’s suggestion. I hope laying it out, step by step, will enable you to follow what we’re discussing here.
Pirelli sells tires for adult cars. Lego makes tires for toy cars. They don’t compete. See the problem with your nonsensical analogy yet?
I only quoted this because it’s the only relevant part of your post as it pertains to anything I’ve said. Ironically, the above supports what I’ve been saying – that comparing Google & Microsoft only makes sense when you strip everything else away, including what their core businesses are. I have to wonder if you’re confused as to what role a web browser plays for each of these companies.
So the details do matter after all. Thanks for helping prove my point.
What’s funny to me is the more you try to elaborate, the closer you’re forced to move towards what I’ve maintained all along.
I originally asked, “How exactly would writing a new cross-platform open source browser help them or their business model?”, with “them” being Microsoft. Perhaps you’d like to take a stab at that instead since you now seem to agree that you can only compare Google and Microsoft in limited capacity, using strict factors.
Nice goal-post move. You started with
This as if investors don’t compare companies in the same market on a daily basis!
Now you seem to have come around to agreeing that they can in fact be compared:
while claiming you’ve said that all along. Whatever.
You still seem to struggle with how professionals factor in their differing business strategies, though.
But we quickly drop back to remind you of your original question:
I regret that you weren’t able to follow or respond to the bulk of my post, where I addressed this in excruciating detail.
Suffice it to say that Microsoft would probably be no more successful with an open source browser to promote their web properties as they were with Nokia X. So we’ll consider it moot and not worth another pass through the lecture hall.
And I’ll leave it at that. Have a great week!
Google didn’t exactly write their own open source browser – they didn’t start from scratch, they built upon an existing OSS engine.
In contrast, MS has a lot of baggage with IE as a closed product.
Safari
(the Windows version was discontinued; just like Mac version of IE was discontinued).
Yes, yes, there’s WebKit, the engine behind Safari …but you said browser.
Edited 2014-08-21 09:33 UTC
Yes they are.
In the same way that they acquire Skype, they can still make the IE popular by creating a cross-platform browser (just like Google is for Chromium) and make the browser compatible with their cloud-based offerings(their cash cow).
Almost everything of Chrome popularity comes from Windows version…