The media really doesn't care much for web browser competition. Blogs, do, but the blogs that care are the ones read by people who already know IE is bad.

Microsoft isn't doing some clever targeting with this. It's pretty obvious that they're going after ignorant people with an ignorant tactic, and let's face it, they couldn't attract users any other way.

For them, the best way to attract users is to make OEMs bundle only Windows+IE with computers they sell. Most people don't reinstall the OS or even know what IE is.

Targeting smart people is seldom a smart strategy - they are not as numerous.

Point. But I was talking about outside of bundling, since I figured it was a given. I'm guessing Microsoft here is trying to retain that hold, at a time when many people download Firefox or Chrome or Safari first thing on bootup.

They never engage competition on a level playfield - for them, it's a waste of resources.

Bundling makes a lot of sense because they can deal with ten, at most, clients and have a huge impact on just about every computer user on the planet. Groklaw has an interesting piece on the probable reasons why Asus pulled the plug on their ARM-based netbook and I guess this is their typical behaviour.

Want to bet the net MSN Live Messenger (or, will they call it "Bing messenger"?) will make every search on the system default to Bing?

Playing fair is so strange to their corporate DNA it would provoke a violent allergic reaction.

Microsoft is stuck in a bad place. I don't doubt they've got some brilliant people working for them, but they made a bunch of tasteless products and now they can't even scrap it all and start again because they have to offer support for all the crap they've made. So they take the only viable path, which is continuing to force crap into crap and making everybody unhappy.

Not everybody.

I won't let them ruin my day.