At a developer conference in Sydney, Australia, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer admitted that employing Safari’s WebKit rendering engine for Internet Explorer was “interesting.”
During a Q&A session at the event, Ballmer was encouraging attending developers to ask questions about Microsoft’s software and services. A student inquired about Microsoft’s internal efforts in lambasting Internet Explorer’s proprietary design from a financial perspective.
“Why is IE still relevant and why is it worth spending money on rendering engines when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster?” the student asked.
Ballmer noted that the question was “cheeky,” but responded with the notion that FOSS solutions to their rendering woes were compelling.
“Open source is interesting. Apple has embraced Webkit and we may look at that, but we will continue to build extensions for IE 8,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ballmer also said that there would still be considerable proprietary innovation for future iterations of Internet Explorer. He explained that Microsoft constantly analyzes the market for new opportunities in adding features that go unrepresented in competing offerings.
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