Microsoft, Web Browser | featured news

The European Union has fined Microsoft €561 million ($733 million) for breaking a pledge to offer personal computer users a choice of Internet browsers when they install the company's flagship Windows operating system.

The fine for failing to give Windows users the choice of competing Web browsers would be the first levied by the European Union for neglecting to comply with a settlement.

The European Union's executive arm formally accused Microsoft on Wednesday of failing to comply with a binding agreement to give customers a choice among Internet browsers....

Microsoft has rushed to issue a patch for a previously unseen bug affecting IE 9 and previous versions of its browser. The problem, which affects hundreds of millions of IE browser users, is being used by attackers to install the Poison Ivy trojan. This piece of malware is used to steal data or take remote control of PCs.

Last Thursday, Microsoft announced several new features to the upcoming IE10, which will launch as part of Windows 8. One of these features, which turns on “Do Not Track” by default, has caused quite a stir over the weekend as new outlets and bloggers have discussed the potential benefits and ramifications of this feature.

Discovery comes just days after Web giant was found to be sidestepping the user privacy preferences in Apple's Safari. Read this blog post by Steven Musil on Security.

A month ago, Google's three-year effort to push its Web browser, Chrome, took a major step when analysts said it had passed Mozilla's Firefox to become the second-most popular tool of its kind on the Internet. Today, that climb continues and has some tech observers wondering whether Chrome could do the unthinkable and topple perennial leader Internet Explorer from atop the browser rankings.

Mozilla and MIcrosoft have teamed up to release a special version of Firefox that integrates Bing as the default search engine.

Are users of other Web browsers smarter than the people who use Microsoft's Internet Explorer? A new survey doesn't quite say so. But it sure as heck suggests it. The survey by AptiQuant, a Vancouver-based Web consulting company, gave more than 100,000 participants an IQ test, while monitoring which browser they used to take the test.

The most recent statistics according to the IE6 Countdown shows that the world as a whole is at 10.9% usage on IE6. The United States, Turkey, Canada, Brazil, Russia, Australia, New Zealand and the UK are at the top (bottom) of the list with under 3% of overall browsers running as IE6. Norway leads everyone at 0.4% and their neighbors in Finland are at 0.8%.