Ballmer called the question "cheeky,"

Me, I'd call it "right on the money". For a while now, I've wondered where the revenue stream is for IE. What exactly does it do for MS that couldn't be done by bunding, say, firefox or opera or ... whatever as part of windows?

this is a joke ? yes ?

"Ballmer: We're looking at WebKit for IE" translation: we are in deep s..t.

Apple has embraced Webkit and we may look at that...

I'm surprised none of the Apple fanboys picked up on that yet. 'OMG MS is copying Apple again!'

When Ballmer says "...we may look at that..."

He really means he's gonna get his lawyers to check if the WebKit's open source license doesn't hamper Microsoft's business. If it doesn't meet their needs, they won't accept it.

Don't hold your breath.

I keep reading these discussions in forums about how Microsoft and Internet Explorer are bad, and open source stuff is good. And I just don't get it. I'll admit I'm not a tech geek, just a regular web surfer with some familiarity with technical stuff.

I've tried Firefox each time it comes out with a new iteration, and it seems to work fine. But I saw no add ons or extensions or other features that really compelled me to want to adopt it as my everyday browser. I noticed no real difference when browsing. If anything, pages rendered in IE look better more often than in Firefox. For an everyday user who only keeps one or two tabs open at any given time, what's the point of switching from IE? I have no data to support this, but I suspect people outside the tech community that use Firefox do so because someone told them it was "better" than IE. They use Firefox, but don't see a real difference. If my son, who is an IT guy, told my mom she should use Firefox, she would, because she trusts his recommendations on tech related stuff. But I doubt she would see any real benefit from switching.

And then there are those who have been told or believe that Firefox is better because it's "open source" and must be better than the evil empire's IE. I'm sorry, but I just don't get it.

So, web developers have piled IE-only code on IE-only code, and now Microsoft will not properly support IE-only code either themselves (or they have to write some aid mode)?

That's pretty ironical.

I can only hope Microsoft will – for once – follow open standards, by using an open source rendering agent if necessary.

Headline: We're looking at WebKit
Quoted text below headline: we may look at that

may look != looking

You guys, you're missing the most unbelievable piece of news here. I mean, this is WAY more historic and unlikely than an African American becoming President...

...Steve Ballmer said, "open-source" and "interesting" in the same sentence. May God have mercy on our souls.

They should just ditch IE and use Mozilla. There's not a huge reason to have their own branded browser anymore.

MS must have a business reason for looking into using WebKit or possibly another open-source engine like Gecko. The two main reasons most people use IE and it has the market share it has is because it is the default browser in windows and it is "good enough" for what they want to do. MS may want to use an open-source engine and then tack proprietary extensions that work with IIS or "enhance the windows user experience".

They would just go make a bastardized version anyway, mostly working the same but not quite.

They have the biggest R&D software development budget on the planet (not that there are other planets, or ones with IT budgets, but still) and they have been working on IE for years.....They can't make a rendering engine, but the OScommunity can on no budget that actually works and works a lot better in terms of compat and it is faster?

I think they should. With an extensions package of some sort.

The way I read his statement; it's not "we're looking at using WebKit;" it's "we're looking at open-sourcing like WebKit."

When he was talking about a "likely" lack of innovation in browsers, was he talking about his own ?