Can Internet Explorer Regain Its Good Name?

My TIME.com Technologizer column for this week is a look at Microsoft’s new beta of Internet Explorer 9. It’s the best version of IE since 1999 or so, with a nicely streamlined interface, good integration with Windows 7, hardware-accelerated graphics, and a heaping helping of HTML5 support.

When it comes to browsers, I’m promiscuous–on any given day, I might be in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and/or Flock. Internet Explorer, however, I’ve tended to avoid unless I had a specific reason to use it. IE9 is already the first Microsoft browser in ages that I’m using without a slight feeling of queasy embarrassment.

Which brings up an intriguing question: How hard is it going to be for Microsoft to win serious browser users back? If IE9 was a new browser from a company nobody had ever heard of and was called, say, Galactivator, I think that average browser junkies would respond to it quite favorably. “It’s kind of reminiscent of Chrome, but with really impressive hardware acceleration,” I can hear them saying.

But the truth is that the name “Internet Explorer” carries enormous baggage. Sixty percent of the people on the Web may still use IE, but (A) 100% of those people are Windows users, (B) some of them are using it in workplaces where IE is the only choice, and (C) a high percentage of them aren’t interested enough in browsers to choose one.

My friends who choose their own browser nearly always choose something other than IE. And when Microsoft’s browser comes up, they often get reflexively snarky, as if we’d just begun discussing Yugos or the DMV. The notion that IE might be a browser they’d want to use is going to cause some cognitive dissonance in the months to come.

If the gradual decline in Internet Explorer’s market share that’s been going on since Firefox showed up in 2004 ends, we’ll know that IE9 is a more competitive modern-era browser than IE6, IE7, or IE8. And if IE’s market share goes up, it may be a sign that the new browser is so good that it’s having a healing effect on the extremely bruised brand that is “Internet Explorer.”

http://crichton007.wordpress.com crichton007

Doubtful. IE has come to represent the monopolistic abuses of Microsoft and their need to integrate everything into one big ball of insecurity. Until Microsoft can separate the elements into separate parts and also patch security holes before the exploits are released into the wild then they might be able to make a compelling case to trust them again. I just don’t see that happening.
beckie66

I think it is going to take a lot for those of us who have migrated away from IE to come back to it full-time. I only use it when I HAVE to. I even have my 6yr old explore his online game playing with Firefox and Chrome, so that he sees how much better his games can run. Some things only work well in IE, but for the most part, Firefox and Chrome do what they do much better than IE.

On a side note, I used to be a Netscape user in the 90s and early 00s. IE was the mainstay at work, and I migrated over to IE for good in 2004. I just started using Chrome and Firefox on a regular basis over the past year, and now I use Firefox for pretty much everything. Change is hard, but in this case, it was well worth it. IE is just so…frustrating.

Maybe IE9 will be the Microsoft save, like Windows 7 was after Vista. Only time will tell.