Over the weekend Clint brought you the news that the new Internet Explorer logo was revealed. The new logo also revealed that the name of Internet Explorer is now officially "Windows Internet Explorer." When I read that post (I always come to Ars first for news) I had to ask myself "Why did they change the name of the product to Windows Internet Explorer?" I decided to do a bit of research and it didn’t take long until I found the answer to my question.
Paul Thurrott, love him or hate him, has a way of stating the obvious.
According to a source at Microsoft, the change signifies that IE will no longer be made available for other platforms--previously, versions shipped for the Mac--and that users should simply consider IE 7 to be part of Windows.
Microsoft publically announced two years ago that there would be no future releases of Internet Explorer on the Macintosh.
Microsoft said Friday that it is halting development of future Macintosh versions of its Internet Explorer browser, citing competition from Apple Computer's Safari browser.
We all know that Microsoft doesn't simply give up due to competition so there has to be another reason for the development halt. I believe it is because keeping a non-Windows build of Internet Explorer is a very costly and time-consuming exercise. Microsoft relies heavily on the Windows API —the pros and cons of which will be argued until the day the sun implodes— which makes porting to other platforms difficult. Microsoft obviously didn't think that the effort was worth it and simply decided to cut their losses, using Safari as a convenient excuse.
There have been no releases for any non-Windows platform since June 16, 2003. To answer my own question, Microsoft changed the name to try to further show that Internet Explorer is a part of Windows, and there is no antitrust suit in the world that can or will change that.
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