German Government the first to officially recognize that IE sucks

> **The German government has warned web users to find an alternative browser to Internet Explorer to protect security.** > > The warning from the Federal Office for Information Security comes after Microsoft admitted IE was the weak link in recent attacks on Google’s systems. > > Microsoft says the security hole can be shut by setting the browser’s security zone to “high”, although this limits functionality and blocks many websites. > > However, German authorities say that even this would not make IE fully safe. I’ve long wondered how the world would finally rid itself of the plague that is Internet Explorer. There have obviously been better free alternatives out there for as long as IE has existed. But people are sheep, too lazy to download free alternatives. And company IT departments have locked many business users into using IE, as well.

Firefox, Safari, and now Chrome have all made respectable inroads into taking away IE’s market share, but at the rate they’ve been going, it will still be years before IE becomes a footnote in Internet History.

This recent attack in China on Google, which was perpetrated via IE, has raised awareness of the dangers of this horrible mess to a whole new level, though. When an entire nation is warning its citizens not to use your software, you officially have a PR problem.

It won’t be long until several other nations follow suit. Why? Because the hackers weren’t after Joe Schmoe’s info this time; they were hacking into government secrets and the intellectual property of giant corporations. IE has officially become a nuisance to powerful people, in other words. You can’t buy your way out of that.

Note, Germany isn’t telling people to upgrade to the newest version of IE; it’s telling people not to use ANY version of IE. No security patch is going to get them to back off this time.

As far as I’m concerned, Microsoft deserves this. Ballmer has paid only lip service to the security nightmares that his software created for so long now.

Take this as yet another sign of Microsoft’s long decline in progress. It will take a while, but believe me, Microsoft is powerless to regain its dominance over the world of computing.