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Comment by uast23 | Hacker News Reader

Its high time Microsoft opened up IE for Linux, Mac and developers. This step alone could get a bit of attention back to Microsoft in app arena.

Microsoft is such a big name that people tend to try out it's product just out of curiosity, with the expectation that something might turn out to be good; given all the money and talent MS has. The company just needs to launch things at a faster pace.

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Why did they actually discontinue IE for the Mac (years ago) or did they never release IE for Linux. One of the reasons IE is losing market share (relatively) must be that people who are coming from other platforms, tend to stick with the browser they like. IE 4 was great at the time (and won the browser war with Netscape). I do not understand why they (MS) seem so fearful of embracing the open standards/multiple platform approach.

They're already fighting an uphill battle against Linux in the server market. They're probably concerned about what lending credibility to it on the desktop could do.

It's never too late if you have a mammoth no users already in one or other form (OS, Windows phone et al.). If MS still opens up the browser and start giving some goodie bags to the developers, something similar to other app stores, we might see some share of the pie going to MS.

i'd be satisfied if they just switched to webkit.

I don't think thats going to happen soon. Adopting open source is probably a matter of pride for MS, else they would have already included Python/Perl in Windows

Indeed; any analysis of this sort must take into account the company's "platform tax" and how unlikely they are to do anything about it.

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