Shoddy Journalism

My God, more shoddy journalism in the tech industry. Randall Kennedy writes that Microsoft may drop Internet Explorer – after IE8 – in favor of a new rendering engine like WebKit (which Safari and Chrome use) or Gecko (Firefox). This sounds reasonable – or at least not outright absurd – unless you either know anything about Internet Explorer or are capable of using Google; in which case, a simple search (for “ie8 new rendering engine”) will lead one to a post on the IEBlog (which itself references a post on A List Apart). Both posts make it very clear that Microsoft embarked on writing a new rendering engine for IE8. In other words, Microsoft already has its “new rendering engine” and has no need to adopt something like Gecko or Webkit – not to mention the support nightmare that would inspire. Given how easy it is to dismiss the premise for Mr. Kennedy’s article, it’s difficult to take it seriously – or see it as anything more than mere shoddy journalism.