by Art Redwood

Created on: March 05, 2009

As the song goes, "There was a time not too long ago," when posing such a question would have more people responding in the affirmative rather than the negative according to Helium's own poll.

However today There comes to mind a more fitting saying that goes something like this "Its like shutting the gate after the horse has bolted.", Microsoft has had their moment in the sun, and while the incidentals of their rise to Internet browser dominance ( through speculated shady behind the door deals, and their world famous strong arm tactics that obliterate any rival in emerging or established markets that they wished to establish a presence in) can and will be debated by scholars for the ages to come, but their latest offering comes too little too late for a market, that's in a constant state of flux, both in its direction and its purpose.

Now don't get me wrong the browser by itself is adequate, I've taken it on the odd test drive but in the end, you have a piece of proprietary software, that by its very nature is secretive and hidden from view, cast into a world that already loves to hate its parent company, and every hacker wanting to earn their net credentials will be trying to crack the thing open farther and wider that the fellow before, as every new vulnerability discovered usually hits the headlines with the dire warnings of the opportunities that such exposed weakness may present to those in the community who might profit from such security holes with such actions as pishing, DDOS, and identify theft, just to name a few of the issues that are constantly hitting the news feeds and creating copy for bloggers to write about around the world about Microsoft and their browser.

But can a browser and indeed a whole companies new direction in the world of always on, cloud computing solutions to a wired world be solved by what amounts to a slick interface redesign and a little tinkering under the hood, unfortunately the answer is no, Microsoft has been behind game since they vanquished Netscape all those net years ago, and in the insuring time did not truly invest the time or the man power needed to continually future proof their product to keep that dominance, no Internet Explorer soon became the poorer cousin as it lagged slowly in critical vulnerability patching and slipping standards compliance that eventually made it open, exposed and dangerous for common domestic chores that most of the net citizens do on their home computers such as
on-line banking etc. let alone

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