Now that Microsoft has pulled the Internet Explorer 8 out of beta its the right time to review the browser that could change the game for IE.

First of all, Internet Explorer 8 was a refreshing change from IE7 which in my opinion was just plain horrible. Microsoft first introduced tabbed browsing in IE7 and it did a horrible job of simply imitating Firefox – and it wasn’t what anyone would call successful.

And now when Google has released the 2nd beta of its browser Microsoft has taken Internet Explorer 8 out of beta. While Microsoft anticipated that IE8 will change the browser game for Microsoft it hasn’t until now!

Fortune magazine also said that IE8 is the Vista of Web browsers – which I don’t deny because Microsoft has put a lot of effort in developing the new browser rich in all the features and yet hasn’t garnered a lot of?attention?or for that matter – users.

In fact, if you look at the market share of web browsers IE seems to be losing on all fronts – it has fallen from 79% to 67% – a reduction of 12%! And this comes when Microsoft still gift wraps IE with all the Windows machines – surprising nevertheless!

Statistics also show that the response to IE8 has been “underwhelming”. During its beta period which lasted almost about a year IE8’s share was only about 1.33% which increased to 1.56% within the 2 day period of IE8 launch – a mere 17% increase in a 3-day period! Now when we look at the same 3-day period of the launch of Firefox 3.0 – it increased from 7.8% during the beta to 18.9% during the launch – almost 142% increase [see the illustration below] -

The strategy at Redmond is that of adding bells and whistles to their products which frankly 98% of the users never really use and which wouldn’t make a?difference?it they weren’t present at the first place! All what users want is speed and performance and Microsoft is doing that trade-ff just to “look good” and not to be left behind. Microsoft, did you learn anything from Google’s Chrome? It’s lightning fast and besides it is much cleaner and provides much of the screen real-estate. Does it trade-off features? Heck no. On the contrary, they introduced a lot of new features all while providing speed and performance.

While IE may publish stats that say that websites load faster on IE 8 than on Firefox or Chrome or any other browser – it means nothing for the user if he can’t experience that boost. I’ll right a detailed review of Internet Explorer 8 with some suggestions to Microsoft to improve IE 8 – meanwhile why don’t you subscribe to DailyPandora and get the updates in your email or RSS?