A surprising turn of events show that, on the Yahoo! homepage yesterday, a large advertisement for Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 can be seen.
Most of you will already be aware that the latest version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer product is IE7. The primary sales pitch for IE7 has been publicised:
"Say goodbye to bulky toolbars. Internet Explorer 7 has a new interface that shows more of each webpage you visit. This streamlined toolbar makes it easier to add websites to your Favourites, search the web, clear your history, and access the other tasks and tools you use most."
IE7 has a number of improvements, such as optimised design, tabbed browsing and the addition of RSS feeds. In short, it all looks a bit 'Firefoxy'.
But despite this resemblance, it is clear that the new browser from Microsoft will be a big improvement on IE6 and be received by all users with open arms. But who would've thought that it would be so well received by one of Microsoft's great rivals, Yahoo!?
The biggest competition for Microsoft's Internet Explorer is Mozilla Firefox. Firefox has recently been eating up a large portion of IE's giant market share in the internet browser sector. IE7 seems to aim to hit back at Firefox, and is an attempt by Microsoft to hold on to its ever shrinking majority market share.
So what better way for Microsoft to promote this new browser than to let Yahoo! use it to integrate their search engine, and have Yahoo! prominently promote IE7 on their search homepage. Similarly, for Yahoo!, having its search engine incorporated in the most widely used internet browser in the world is no measly PR coup
Yahoo's optimised version of IE7 doesn't really add much to the ordinary IE7 browser. Yahoo!'s version possesses their search function on the toolbar, as well as a Y! button that clicks through to the Yahoo homepage, and Yahoo Tabs for browsing.
Ultimately, the Yahoo optimised browser is quite similar to the ordinary version, what is more interesting is that the two giant companies seem to be becoming allies to try to fend off and compete with their mutual competitor: Google. Are we going to see Yahoo! team up with Microsoft and become MicroYahooSoft, or even YahooSoft?
It certainly seems that the obvious answer is for the two companies to combine their complimentary strengths to stop their major rivals from running away from them in the race for online supremacy.
