So everyone’s atwitter with news Microsoft’s IE 7 or Longhorn or whatever this is called will integrate support for RSS. You’ll please excuse me if I’m underwhelmed by this. After all it’s been at least six months since I started using RSS and I’m not exactly what you’d call an early adopter. Since then I’ve embraced the delivery format completely and use it for 98% of my web-surfing.

Why is anyone caring what Microsoft does these days to begin with? Here are some of the areas they have lagged in over the last few years:

  • Search (got smoked by Google and Yahoo)
  • RSS (got smoked by BlogLines, Newsgator and just about everyone else)
  • Music (got smoked by Apple, which just has to sting)
  • Browser (got smoked by Mozilla’s Firefox)

So why is everyone still tracking what comes out of Redmond? Because they still dominate the operating system. Windows complete reign of the OS market is unquestioned and, despite some companies moving to Linux and such, is unthreatened for the foreseeable future. If it weren’t for that we would have relagated Microsoft to the dustbin along with other companies whose monolithic status has hurt their agility.

Sorry, but I just don’t get it. Time to cut the cord, people. Or at least ease up on the rhetoric. That might get Gates and Co.’s attention.