With competing internet browsers such as Firefox 2 increasing in popularity every day, Microsoft has taken the bold move of allowing users of pirated copies of Windows XP to download Internet Explorer 7 without checks.

It has become obvious that Microsoft has realised it is fast losing the battle of the browsers, by the fact that Microsoft is now removing its “Windows Genuine Advantage” anti-piracy requirement that we have all come to know and hate, when downloading and installing the new Internet Explorer 7 program or update from Microsoft.

Clearly it’s become obvious since the release of IE7 that its uptake hasn’t been as good as Microsoft would have hoped, regardless of what spin the company has put on things.

While IE6 is still the dominant browser on the Windows platform, each week IE overall continues to lose market share to Firefox.

In the last month, popular computer mag website APCMag.com for example, only registered 50.38% Internet Explorer usage. Firefox accounted for 39.9% of users, Safari 5% and Opera 4%. Of the Internet Explorer users, nearly half - 45.61% are still using IE6.

What makes this even more remarkable is the fact that Microsoft has been using it’s Automatic Update Service to force XP users to download and install the latest IE7 browser.

The fact that Microsoft is now removing its “Windows Genuine Advantage” anti-piracy requirement indicates that it is facing the reality that a large proportion of Windows users are running pirated copies of Windows, and if the software giant wants to achieve market domination with its new browser, it can’t neglect its “black market customers”.

You can read the blog post from Microsoft about it here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 6th, 2007 at 6:34 pm and is filed under Tech News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.