The full text is available here:
http://news.com.com/The+fox+is+in+Microsof..._3-5497057.html
QUOTE
Published by the Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit group supporting open-source software that draws upon the skills of hundreds of volunteer programmers, Firefox is a Web browser that is fast and filled with features that Microsoft's stodgy Internet Explorer lacks. Firefox installs in a snap, and it's free.
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Microsoft has always viewed Internet Explorer's tight integration with Windows to be an attractive feature. That, however, was before security became the unmet need of the day. Firefox sits lightly on top of Windows, in a separation from the underlying operating system that the Mozilla Foundation's president, Mitchell Baker, calls a "natural defense."
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Gary Schare, Microsoft's director of product management for Windows, has been assigned the unenviable task of explaining how Microsoft plans to respond to the Firefox challenge with a product whose features were last updated three years ago. He has said that current users of Internet Explorer will stick with it once they take into account "all the factors that led them to choose IE in the first place." Beg your pardon. Choose? Doesn't IE come bundled with Windows?
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All Microsoft can offer Internet Explorer users are incremental security improvements, new patches to fix holes in the old patches. In Windows XP Service Pack 2, the company claimed as a major security advance a notice that is displayed if the user takes an action within Internet Explorer that sets off a download of a tiny application called an ActiveX control, which can take control of your PC and, in a worst-case instance, erase your hard drive. "Users still must make informed decisions," Schare added. (With Firefox, users do not have to make decisions about these miniprograms, which are blocked by design.)
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Microsoft has always viewed Internet Explorer's tight integration with Windows to be an attractive feature. That, however, was before security became the unmet need of the day. Firefox sits lightly on top of Windows, in a separation from the underlying operating system that the Mozilla Foundation's president, Mitchell Baker, calls a "natural defense."
...
Gary Schare, Microsoft's director of product management for Windows, has been assigned the unenviable task of explaining how Microsoft plans to respond to the Firefox challenge with a product whose features were last updated three years ago. He has said that current users of Internet Explorer will stick with it once they take into account "all the factors that led them to choose IE in the first place." Beg your pardon. Choose? Doesn't IE come bundled with Windows?
...
All Microsoft can offer Internet Explorer users are incremental security improvements, new patches to fix holes in the old patches. In Windows XP Service Pack 2, the company claimed as a major security advance a notice that is displayed if the user takes an action within Internet Explorer that sets off a download of a tiny application called an ActiveX control, which can take control of your PC and, in a worst-case instance, erase your hard drive. "Users still must make informed decisions," Schare added. (With Firefox, users do not have to make decisions about these miniprograms, which are blocked by design.)
And the best part...
QUOTE
Stuck with code from a bygone era when the need for protection against bad guys was little considered, Microsoft cannot do much. It does not offer a new stand-alone version of Internet Explorer. Instead, the loyal customer must download and install the newest version of Service Pack 2. That, in turn, requires Windows XP. Those who have an earlier version of Windows are out of luck if they wish to stick with Internet Explorer.
Schare of Microsoft does have one suggestion for those who cannot use the latest patches in Service Pack 2: buy a new personal computer. By the same reasoning, the security problems created by a car's broken door lock could be solved by buying an entirely new automobile. The analogy comes straight from Schare. "It's like buying a car," he said. "If you want to get the latest safety features, you have to buy the latest model."
In this case, the very latest model is not a 2001 Internet Explorer, but a 2004 Firefox.
Schare of Microsoft does have one suggestion for those who cannot use the latest patches in Service Pack 2: buy a new personal computer. By the same reasoning, the security problems created by a car's broken door lock could be solved by buying an entirely new automobile. The analogy comes straight from Schare. "It's like buying a car," he said. "If you want to get the latest safety features, you have to buy the latest model."
In this case, the very latest model is not a 2001 Internet Explorer, but a 2004 Firefox.
Classic last line. Also packed in the article was the fact that IE's market share has dipped to 89%. Still commanding, indeed, but it is still falling consistently, albeit slowly. The Longhorn-only IE7 isn't expected until 2006, too, so Mozilla still has more than a year to capitalize on the time.
Although this article is hosted on C|NET, it's straight out of the NYT, so millions of not-necessarily-technical people read it.
