At the stroke of midnight last Thursday, Microsoft made Internet Explorer 5.0 available for public download. And the public yawned. The 5th iteration of Microsoft's web browser includes such wildly innovative features as a new console for the Windows Media player, automatic form data entry, and a button next to the address bar for users who don't know to hit enter. And the press yawned. Microsoft also added a new HTML renderer and functions similar to Netscape's 'What's Related' service. More notably is what IE5 doesn't include, namely the mail filter that caused Blue Mountain Arts to sue Microsoft, an update to Active Desktop, and the familiar blue 'e' logo (the Windows logo has been substituted since IE is "part of the operating system").
The browser sidegrade is available as a download over the internet, but at 50 megabytes most users will likely choose to buy the $5 upgrade CD directly from Microsoft. Or they can wait for the renamed Windows98 Service Pack 1 [see story below] which will include IE5 when it hits the market sometime this summer. Internet Explorer 5.0 is avilable in some two-dozen languages for a platforms as diverse as Windows 9X, NT, 3.X, Solaris and HP-UX. Mac users will be waiting several months for their own version of the 'Windows upgrade.'

It didn't take long to find bugs and security problems in the new browser. Starting before the product was even released, privacy advocates complained about the potential risks of having the 'AutoComplete' form entry feature. That function takes entries from past forms and "suggests" that they be used in other forms, saving web surfers the trouble of actually having to type their own information. The feature is optional and can be disabled, but someone using a browser from a public terminal isn't likely to know how to turn it off, or to even check that their own information - like name, address or credit card number - isn't being saved. This is a more advanced version than the AutoComplete included with Internet Explorer 4, which was limited to completing URLs in the address bar.
Then on the same day the browser was made available, Microsoft posted to its web site a list of "issues" that Explorer has with Visual Studio 6.0. Most of the problems are related to the updated HTML rendering engine included with IE5, but there are also problems like Visual J++ 6.0 shutting down the browser after its debugger is used. Microsoft said that a Visual Studio service pack already scheduled for release this summer will take care of the incompatibilities.
And after reviewing the program, the 7000-member Web Standards Project released a statement calling Internet Explorer 5 a "lost opportunity" to create a standards-compliant browser. Specifically, the group complained that IE doesn't fully support the series of open standards that Microsoft itself helped create; standards that include Cascading Style Sheets, Document Object Model, XML and HTML version 4. Microsoft defended itself by saying that they are committed to supporting people who still use older HTML standards and cannot comply to the new ones since those people would be left behind. But the Web Standards Project also complained about IE extensions that make it incompatible with other browsers. Microsoft of course had no comment about that allegation, since it neutralizes their other defense.

A report last week said that the remaining 19 states involved in the US government’s antitrust suit against Microsoft will only be happy if Microsoft's operations are severely modified. According to the article in Tuesday's New York Times, state officials will only accept a settlement splitting Microsoft into several smaller companies or forcing Windows into the public domain as open source software. The report also said several of the states want to fine Microsoft under their own laws for every violation. Some legal analysts say that a violation could be as broadly defined as one sale of Windows, meaning some states could charge Microsoft thousands of dollars for each copy of Windows ever shipped. If the 19 states involved fined Microsoft, say, $2000 for every copy of Windows sold, that would be something like 60 million copies of Windows (Microsoft's own numbers on 9X) times $2000 for each of the 19 states. That all adds up to nice round sum of $2,280,000,000,000 - or two-trillion, two-hundred eighty billion US dollars. That's nearly 30 times Bill Gates' current networth of $80 billion. Wonder how many years it would take him to pay that off making eight bucks an hour at Starbucks..

Preparing for a full assault on MP3, Microsoft has created its own proprietary compressed audio format, MSAudio 4.0. In addition to making the next version of Windows Media Player compatible with the audio type, Microsoft is building a system into Windows 2000 that will encrypt, play, manage and - most importantly - track the digital audio files as they are passed from one computer to another over the internet. Some of the included technology comes from Microsoft's recent investments in Rights Exchange (now renamed Reciprocal) and ThingWorld.com [see NewsSource last week]. The Behemoth could be lining itself up to get a 'company of the year' award from the music industry..

After delaying for four months, Microsoft has finally claimed that it can indeed meet the $1 million challenge issued by Oracle back in November 1998 [see NewsSource, Nov. 23 '98]. Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison issued the challenge during his Comdex keynote address, promising US $1 million to anyone able to run Microsoft SQL Server 7 at more than one percent the speed of the best published performance for Oracle's 8i database.
Microsoft's statement was released last Tuesday and promised that the results would by in by the next day, but one week later we have yet to hear another thing about this story. The fact that Microsoft hasn't trumpeted the results leads us to believe that perhaps the results weren't quite so good as was promised. Looks like the Oracle Challenge was a little more challenging than Microsoft had expected.

Last Monday Canada's Nortel Networks said it has joined forces with Intel, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard to make equipment that joins voice, video, and data traffic on company networks. That would - ideally - enable large businesses to have videoconferences and voicemail over their local data networks. The Nortel-built products are designed to work with Windows NT, and will be available from HP sometime later this year. A live statement from Bill Gates was relayed to the press conference through a satelite link, but the sound wasn't working at first because of technical difficulties, likely due to using the new technology.

Microsoft has again renamed the first Windows 98 service pack, this time referring to it as Windows 98 SE, or Second Edition. The glorified bug patch was originally known as the OEM Service Release, then renamed Service Release when the consumer version and computer manufacturer version development teams were merged. The latest naming scheme is intended to make it easier for Microsoft PR to hype the product as a 'new' operating system and take attention off Windows 2000's continual delays.
Last week Microsoft made a patch for the NT screensaver security hole [see NewsSource last week] available on its web site after issuing a security alert to NT 4 users. The latest bug, which was discovered earlier this month by an Indian software company, allows screensavers to change user access settings.
Last week a patch was also issued for Office 95, bring that product into Y2K compliance. Microsoft said that the patch is not critical, but most of the bundled applications will have problems recognizing certain dates without it. Now that they have the products shipped in 1995 fixed, perhaps Microsoft can start working on all the noncompliant software it sold in 1998.

_{Are Microsoft licensing bargains obsolete?
Microsoft looks to boost Windows 2000 app compatibility
MS and Novell square off over NDS
SAP challenging Windows}