It's important to understand that Microsoft had effectively killed IE. That is, the original plan for Windows Vista, the next major version of Windows (see my Beta 1 review), called for IE to be subsumed completely into the Windows shell. There were to be no more standalone IE updates.

Two things changed those plans. First, hacker attacks on IE 6 reached record levels, with Microsoft releasing IE 6 patches constantly over a three year period. Second, the Mozilla Foundation, which rose out of the ashes of Netscape, developed the aforementioned standalone browser, Firefox (originally called Phoenix, and then briefly Firebird), which, amazingly, began eating away at IE's market share. At the time of this writing, Firefox is closing in on 10 percent of the market, with all of that market share--all of it--coming at IE's expense. In certain technology-oriented circles, Firefox's share is actually much, much higher than that, and it actually outstrips IE in some cases.