[d4nt]

Why do Microsoft benefit from having a good browser? This article says the only reason is to protect Window's market share and that will inevitably lead to MS doing something evil with it's OS market share.

Two things occur to me: 1. Windows still has a dominant market share, if they were going to do evil I don't see what's stopping them 2. Having a good browser might protect their browser market share but I'm not convinced it protects their OS market share. Maybe if IE was way way better than anything else it would stop people going to Mac OS, but it isn't and there are plenty of other more significant barriers to changing your OS.

I think it's more plausible that their investing in browsers because they want to help their online services market share, and having that search box default to Bing on 50% of PCs is hugely valuable.

[notahacker]

Agree with the above and add in (3) Being known for bad browsers is detrimental to sales of other products