>Or simply that they'd dropped the ball in other departments and had to redeploy resources to a profit centre?
You aren't entirely wrong; Microsoft tripped over themselves trying to get XP's successor out of development hell.
It was five years from Windows XP to Windows Vista, compared to one to two years between Windows releases up to XP. And then as we all know, Windows Vista completely flopped because it was too advanced for its time.
It took eight years from Windows XP to Windows 7 until Microsoft finally had a new Windows release that people would come out and buy. In a way, they really were too busy elsewhere to care about IE.
You aren't entirely wrong; Microsoft tripped over themselves trying to get XP's successor out of development hell.
It was five years from Windows XP to Windows Vista, compared to one to two years between Windows releases up to XP. And then as we all know, Windows Vista completely flopped because it was too advanced for its time.
It took eight years from Windows XP to Windows 7 until Microsoft finally had a new Windows release that people would come out and buy. In a way, they really were too busy elsewhere to care about IE.