Yesterday, Microsoft came out with a big surprise for all Windows XP users. They have detached Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation requirement to install Internet Explorer 7 on Windows XP. Even users who are running pirated version of Windows XP will be able to install and run Internet Explorer 7 on their machine.
While most of you might probably guess that Microsoft is doing this to regain the market share lost to free alternatives like Firefox and Opera, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Here’s an excerpt from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Blog:
Because Microsoft takes its commitment to help protect the entire Windows ecosystem seriously, we’re updating the IE7 installation experience to make it available as broadly as possible to all Windows users. With today’s "Installation and Availability Update," Internet Explorer 7 installation will no longer require Windows Genuine Advantage validation and will be available to all Windows XP users.
Step in the right direction, but too late! If Microsoft really bothered about providing the best browsing experience to users, then they would have removed it ages ago. If you look a bit deeper into browser usage statistics, you might possibly argue with me:
IE 7 has a clear lead over Firefox 2, but still falls behind IE 6. Hopefully, we’ll see the usage of IE 7 go up at the cost of IE 6. You can download Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP SP2 from here.
[Via Neowin]
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