On February 15, 2005, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates publicly revealed that his company would denounce its previous plans and ship a separate major update to Internet Explorer (IE) before Longhorn. Until that, Microsoft representatives were adamant that the security enhancements they had added to the version of IE in Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) would be it until Longhorn.
There were indications, however, that Microsoft was reevaluating its stance on IE. First, the open source Mozilla Firefox Web browser, released in November 2004, was proving to be enormously popular with tech-savvy Web users, and its garnered over 25 million downloads in 100 days, grabbing about 5 percent of the Web browser market. Second, Microsoft began discussing the possibility that it would at least provide minor updates to IE before Longhorn.
Here's what Gates said about this major IE update, which will be called Internet Explorer 7. "What we've decided to do is a new version of Internet Explorer, this is IE 7, and it adds a new level of security," he said. "We will be able to put this into beta by early in the summer [of 2005]." Gates then noted that IE 7 would only be made available to users of XP SP2, and not to those still using earlier Windows versions like Windows 2000 or 9x. "Of course, as well, we'll include these capabilities in the next release of Windows scheduled for 2006, which is our Longhorn release."
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