Browser Wars. More Tricks?

There’s a new browser war upon us, with Microsoft out to maintain its dominant share and impede the progress of upstarts like Google Chrome. Every major browser maker has kicked its development cycle into overdrive to one-up the competition.

So, if we’re all going to do the Time Warp and go back to 1996, it’s only fitting that we toss some fear, uncertainly, and doubt into the fight.

That appears to be Microsoft’s strategy with its new cloud-based Office 365 service. Like many current Microsoft products, this service works with a broad range of browsers and operating systems. Since Microsoft develops Windows, the default browser is Internet Explorer, which some people say is “forced on us” after a clean install of Windows. Another noticeable thing about the services is that it works well in many browsers.

So why do I see this text every time I start-up the service using the current version of Chrome?

“You are currently viewing Microsoft Office 365 with a web browser that may cause some pages to display incorrectly and some features to function in an unexpected way. You will have a better experience … if you use one of these supported browsers.”

It’s a war that may never be won.