Internet Explorer 7 Announced

Why? Because we listened to a lot of customers, analysts, and business partners. We heard a clear message: “Yes, SP2 makes the situation better. We want more, sooner. We want security on top of the compatibility and extensibility IE gives us, and we want it on XP. Microsoft, show us your commitment.” 

I think of today’s announcement as a clear statement back to our customers: “Hey, Microsoft heard you. We’re committing.”

Why are we talking about it today? Because our customers have asked us, with increasing urgency, what our plans are. We want to convey our intentions to our customers clearly and in a timely way.

I’ve gotten questions about the ship date. We know that feedback from customers and partners is crucial. We’re going to release a beta and listen, then refresh the beta and listen some more. We’ll ship when the product is right.

I’ve gotten other questions about support for Windows 2000. Right now, we’re actively listening to our major Windows 2000 customers about what they want and comparing that to the engineering complexity of that work. That’s all I can say on that topic.

Please know that the IE team is working hard. We’re eager to improve and better secure the web experience for the hundreds of millions of IE users around the world. We delivered on XP SP2. We are actively delivering on our part of a great 64-bit Windows client.  We continue to deliver on security updates for customers who have not moved to XP SP2. We’re going to deliver on IE7.