[willfully_lost]

IE is worth a lot to Microsoft because of Bing. Google pays Mozilla for Google search being on the toolbar. Chrome is Google. IE is the only browser that would have Bing be the default search engine. That's worth a good amount of money to them - I can't seem them throwing up the white flag.

[alanh]

They could easily release a WebKit-based browser with Bing search built in and call it MSIE, solving both your/Microsoft’s and schammy’s problems.

(Edit: This is obvious to industry observers and has been “requested” by frustrated devs for years. But Microsoft won’t do it. Pride, probably, is the biggest reason.)

[masklinn]

And it would instantly break every single intranet built on MS technologies.

[alanh]

They could bake in Trident (IE’s rendering engine) and allow intranet administrators /IT to declare intranets render in IE7/8/9 mode. They already do something similar with their browsers, and IETab for Firefox essentially does this.

[dchest]

It's time to break them.

[schammy]

Is Bing really a big source of revenue for them though? I thought something like 90% of their profit was Windows and Office.

Either way, good point in terms of promoting their own search engine, but unless it's a significant source of profit then again I say, what is the point?

[dmnd]

Bing will never be a significant source of revenue if it has no users. Like it or not, browser defaults drive market share.

Besides, what's wrong with a large company trying to diversify streams of income?

[Typhon]

Nothing's wrong with that in itself.

However, it can have undesired negative side-effects.