Microsoft has taken a back-handed dig at Mozilla, claiming that browser makers cannot afford to ignore corporate users.
Mozilla community manager Asa Dotzler yesterday said he'd rather the open-source developer created the best browser for consumers. "I’d much rather Mozilla was spending its limited resources looking out for the billions of users that don’t have enterprise support systems already taking care of them."
We respect that the people who run the critical infrastructure of the world must do so without our goals for a modern web trumping their needs to run their systems under their control
Microsoft has responded, saying it considers businesses just as important as consumers. "Making the web better for large organisations (with managed IT) is just as important as making the web better for consumers and developers," said Dean Hachamovitch, head of Internet Explorer, in a blog post.
"People, individually and in large organisations, who use IE on Windows are Microsoft customers," he added. "We want all Windows customers to have the best experience of the web."
He said that's why Microsoft delivers "updates on a predictable cadence", and keeps products alive for 10 years - rather than the few months seen with Firefox 4.
Indeed, decade-old IE6 remains one of the most used versions of the browser, something Microsoft has been trying to extinguish for years.
However, Microsoft released IE9 this year without support for XP, despite the ten-year-old OS still being used by a large portion of Windows customers, meaning the most up-to-date version those customers can use is IE8.
Stability important
Hachamovitch said some businesses need to focus on stability rather than cutting-edge technology.
"The best way to move the web forward involves fulfilling the real-world needs of the individuals and organisations on the web," Hachamovitch argued. "Sometimes, the needs for stable information infrastructure include web browsers that are compatible with key systems, are fully updated with respect to security issues, and are not necessarily the very latest version.
"We respect that the people who run the critical infrastructure of the world must do so without our goals for a modern web trumping their needs to run their systems under their control," he said.
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