Microsoft’s new browser ready to fight in a stripped-down world

REDMOND (WASHINGTON) — Microsoft’s new browser, code-named Project Spartan, will be designed to be used across devices, just like Google’s Chrome is available on Apple’s iOS, Android and PC in due course, as well as presumably on Xbox and the default on Windows Phone.

Microsoft has confirmed that Spartan will be unveiled later this year and will not use the familiar Internet Explorer (IE) name, the Web browser that is almost 20 years old and battle-scarred from rows with European regulators as well as competition from Mozilla’s Firefox and Chrome.

“We’re now researching what the new brand, or the new name, for our browser should be in Windows 10,” Microsoft’s marketing chief Chris Capossela said on Wednesday.

Spartan appears to be explicitly following the philosophy of market leader Chrome. When Google introduced the browser, it used the name because, ironically, it had stripped off all the unnecessary chrome that adorns cars and websites alike. Spartan, as the name implies, is ready to do battle in this stripped-down world.

Besides working across multiple devices, Spartan will also offer integration with Cortana, the voice assistant that Microsoft is pushing and which rivals Apple’s Siri and Google’s own equivalent, already built into Chrome. Spartan will also let users view simultaneous different versions of websites: For instance, comparing desktop and mobile versions on one screen.

Spartan is likely to take the place of IE12, but it was IE7 that caused much of the most conspicuous parts of the “anti-trust” wars that saw the company stop bundling the software with its Windows operating system in Europe. Such was the dominance of Microsoft that it felt it had to offer users an explicit decision on which browser they wanted to use for fear of being fined further hundreds of millions of dollars in 2009.

Today, IE has lagged. Microsoft is thought to be dropping the IE brand in a bid to shed “negative perceptions” gathered since its 1995 launch. The browser is known to be slow and has suffered a host of security problems.

Mr Jason Liggi, a developer at Ascot-based digital agency Rawnet, said: “IE has developed a fairly bad reputation over the years, by and large because of IE6-7, but also because of its implementation of Web standards … IE generally elicits groans across the board, even with people outside of tech communities. It’s just got negative connotations nowadays, and it will be interesting to see the changes the new name will bring for the brand.”

So, Spartan now finds itself a soldier in Microsoft’s battle to stop the march of iOS and Android in a world in which tablets and phones are increasingly the only devices that users need. It may be simply a cosmetic change that takes on the popularity of Chrome and Firefox, with the bells and whistles of voice control and user logins incidental to the need for Microsoft to make a product people want to use rather than simply the default.

But even if it comes up with unique features, the very existence of Spartan underlines the new reality for Microsoft: It must tread the line between explaining that its devices are the best for users who need to access the growing number of online services, while also claiming that they need a seriously powerful operating system based on Windows to get serious jobs done.

As more of the world moves online, it may in fact prove that a Spartan computer is all users need, and ironically that’s not enough for the Windows empire that powers Microsoft.