Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 9

Mar 15, 2011, 16:42 GMT

San Francisco - Microsoft released a new version of its browser Tuesday, saying that its Internet Explorer 9 was faster, safer and easier to use than the competitors from Google, Firefox and Apple that have been gobbling up its market share.

Featuring a clean new design that is meant to focus attention on the site the user is viewing, the new browser has been lauded by tech reviewers with the website Ars Technica calling it 'the most modern browser there is.'

Microsoft says that IE9 runs on HTML5 which allows it to smoothly handle multimedia content and in-browser applications.

Microsoft said the new browser had been downloaded 40 million times within hours of its launch and that 250 top websites, including Facebook, eBay and Amazon.com, which collectively reach more than 1 billion people, had been optimized to work with the browser.

'What people care about on the web is their sites, not their browser. That's why Internet Explorer 9 is about making those sites shine. The browser is the theater, and the sites people visit are the play, and that is what Internet Explorer 9 makes better your favorite sites,' said Ryan Gavin, senior director, Windows Internet Explorer, at Microsoft.

Internet Explorer, which once enjoyed over a 90 per cent market share, has seen its dominance decline in recent years and had just a 57 per cent share in February down from 62 per cent a year earlier, according to research firm Net Applications. Mozilla's Firefox had 22 per cent, Google's Chrome had 11 per cent and Apple's Safari browser had 6.4 per cent.

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