"Microsoft is readying a new, more secure version of Internet Explorer, the world's most widely used — and hacked — Web browser, company Chairman Bill Gates said in a speech to security experts Tuesday," according to USA Today.
"The software giant will start testing the upgrade, called IE 7, this summer and make it available to users of the latest version of Windows at some point after that. The move underscores how an onslaught of spyware — tiny programs implanted on the browser — have come to plague computer users and tarnish Microsoft's reputation."
Comment: This represents a change of plan. Microsoft had decided to ship new versions of IE only with new versions of Windows. However, it has already shipped a new IE with XP SP2 and will now ship a new standalone version -- impelled, no doubt, not just by concern over spyware etc but by competition from Firefox. The graph is from Google's Zeitgeist and shows the browsers used to access Google, March 2001 -- June 2004.
