From the press release Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer states:

“…. we conveyed our willingness to raise our offer to $33.00 per share, reflecting again our belief in this collective opportunity. This increase would have added approximately another $5 billion of value to your shareholders, compared to the current value of our initial offer. It also would have reflected a premium of over 70 percent compared to the price at which your stock closed on January 31. Yet it has proven insufficient, as your final position insisted on Microsoft paying yet another $5 billion or more, or at least another $4 per share above our $33.00 offer.”

Microsoft has posted Steve Ballmer’s letter in full to Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang online here and Yahoo responded publicly here, stating:

“From the beginning of this process, our independent board and our management have been steadfast in our belief that Microsoft’s offer undervalued the company and we are pleased that so many of our shareholders joined us in expressing that view. Yahoo! is profitable, growing, and executing well on its strategic plan to capture the large opportunities in the relatively young online advertising market. Our solid results for the first quarter of 2008 and increased full year 2008 operating cash flow outlook reflect the progress the company is making.”

I can’t help feeling that this could be a short sighted mistake on Yahoo’s part. Yahoo’s share price will fall now that Microsoft has pulled out and Yahoo will struggle independently against the behemoth that is Google. I think Yahoo realises this and their solidarity has already been diluted with their agreed strategic partnership with Google and Microsoft cites this as one of the reasons (along with the share price) of the withdrawal of the offer.

What will be really interesting is where Microsoft goes from here, their assault on the web in which they trail Google to such an extent, has been dealt a major blow by this. Is there another company that would benefit them to the same extent that the Yahoo acquisition would have? What do you think and is this the end of the matter?

1. Go to ‘Settings’ -> ‘Preferences’
2. Expand the ‘Video’ option and click on ‘Output Modules’
3. Change the ‘Video Output Module’ from the drop down list to ‘DirectX Video Output’
4. Expand ‘Output Modules’ and click on ‘DirectX’
5. From the settings that appear, take the tick out of the ‘Use hardware YUV->RGB conversions’.
6. Save your settings and exit.

Step 3 in the process.

IE7, while a massive improvement on IE6 with features such as tabbed browsing, RSS integration and improved rendering engine amongst others, it is still not right. Even with all the stink in the web community about the lack of a standards based browser from the major OS developer, IE7 is still some distance from Firefox 2 or even 1.5 for that matter. For all the effort that has been put into IE7 it’s ironic that as we enter a time for major change in the PC world with Vista, IE7 would have probably been a mostly cosmetic enhancement if it wasn’t for Firefox. Yet still I get the impression of IE7 being a ‘just enough’ browser to appease the majority and keep the web community just far enough from the door. I’d expect much more to come from Microsoft in future releases.

Firefox is continually evolving though, taking (relatively) small steps each time but each time getting the improvements right; creating a product that is a pleasure to use. The integration and perfection of the session saver add-on (extension) is a perfect example of doing the good things really well.

Battles require a contest and I can’t help but feel that from Microsoft’s point of view the browser battle is already won and aren’t really trying. Credit should be given to the IE team for the improvements to IE7 but they still have a long way to go until they are taken seriously by developers and designers and their browser being not being treated with the contempt it currently deserves. There will always be people who want to stray from the conventional but until businesses wake up and see the productivity and usability benefits, Firefox will continue to grow at nowhere near the rate it warrants.

From Mozilla’s and the privileged end users point of view, Firefox is still quite clearly a number of steps ahead of IE7 and they know this. While the gap between Firefox and IE7 has narrowed, and the competition will eventually benefit Firefox’s user too, I don’t get the impression the developers and people involved are too concerned about the developments coming from Microsoft at the moment.

A Browser War? A lovers tiff more like. Maybe in the future with the releases of IE8 and FF3 but at the moment this is just the beginning. As the consumer, the real benefit we will receive is an improved browser that many are forced to use in their workplace and the continued polish of an excellent browser in the home!

1. Open up regedit from using the run menu.
2. Locate ‘HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ Folder\ shellex\ ContextMenuHandlers‘
3. Add the following as a subkey: ‘{a2a9545d-a0c2-42b4-9708-a0b2badd77c8}’ (without the quotes!)
4. Exit regedit…… (Continued)………

Now, simply hold down the shift key when right clicking on any folder to show the updated context menu. From the menu click the ‘Pin to Start Menu’ option to add to the start menu. In my case I can now do the Windows key and ‘M’ key followed by enter to open the desired folder. This also works with your documents and programs as well.

IE7 is a massive improvement on IE6 and really looks as though Microsoft is finally taking the threat of Firefox and the opinions of web developers worldwide seriously at last. Interestingly in addition to IE7’s continual improvement, Microsoft has gone live with a IE Add-ons site offering extras for their browsers though I’d expect most to be written especially for IE7 upon launch. ‘Extensions for IE’ anyone!?

So while there is now a period of at least three months to get what minor fixes implemented in new sites and whatever new fixes will be required there is an issue with running IE6 and IE7 on the same machine. IE7’s beta installs over IE6 which will be fine for the everyday user but for those who want to try it out first or developers who need to test on both browsers the official line has been to run Virtual Machine for this beta browser.

Well short of Microsoft releasing a stand alone IE7, which isn’t gonna happen, the alternative appears to be a simple batch file that Jon Galloway has written. By extracting the IE7 install exe (which is just an self extracting archive) into a directory and creating a batch file the program starts up and functions fully it would seem, without effecting the IE6 installation in anyway. The two programs even seem to function side by side without causing problems.

This does make temporary alterations to the registry though so I would advise backing up before running for the first time in case something goes wrong.

Whatever the intention, though clearly tongue in cheek it emphasises the polar difference in branding and design these two rival companies employ. It is well worth checking out.