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Microsoft's Windows 7 development team yesterday confirmed that users will be able to remove Internet Explorer 8, as well as several other Microsoft applications, from Windows 7.

This appears to be a major step by the company in addressing the long standing anti-trust complaints of bundling their applications with Windows, and may account in part for the recent scaling back by the European Union in its monitoring of the software giant.

The comment of the day for yesterday was from our post Internet Explorer 8 Has Arrived. Sarah Perez noted that IE8 "showcases many new features and improvements, like Facebook and eBay integration, standards compliance, and the ability to work with AJAX web pages." Sarah wrote that "this launch shows that Microsoft is not taking Firefox's creep into browser market share lightly." However commenter theharmonyguy thinks that IE8 is as much a challenge to Google, because "some of the new features seem similar to things like gadgets in iGoogle."

Microsoft's next-generation web browser, Internet Explorer 8, has arrived. In a surprising move, after the demo of IE8 and its new features at today's session of the MIX08 conference, the startling announcement was made: "It's available for download now". The new browser showcases many new features and improvements, like Facebook and eBay integration, standards compliance, and the ability to work with AJAX web pages. What's most notable about IE8, though, is more than a sum of its parts. If anything, this launch shows that Microsoft is not taking Firefox's creep into browser market share lightly.

The Internet's top two web browsers each had significant news out this week. Mozilla released the second beta version of Firefox 3. Not to be outdone, the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft announced that they had taken a major step towards standards compliance by correctly rendering the Acid2 Test face.