Microsoft Corporation finally reacts to competitive forces and releases their free web browser upgrade to the public. With this 7.0 release, Internet Explorer is now up to par with the free alternative web browsers like Firefox and Opera, both of which have been providing users with a safer, more efficient web browsing experience.

For years, Microsoft has failed to update their Windows-integrated web browser because of lacking competition. Well, it didn't take long for angry consumers to spark the creation of the open source web browser Firefox (read more at Wikipedia). Firefox has shed market share from Internet Explorer, which used to have a monopolistic 95% market share. That dropped as consumers noticed the obvious benefits of Firefox, which over the last couple years has taken about 11% total market share from Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer 7 has many new features like tabbed browsing, "phishing" protection, spyware protection, and an integrated search box. Tabbed browsing allows user to browse multiple web pages at once, all within the same window. This tabbed browsing feature is what initially made Firefox so popular and is the new standard for web browsing. The added security protections of IE7 are of course a must and I'm glad that Microsoft has taken these digital threats seriously.

Check out the new IE7 (if you dare!).

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