Tags: Apple, Apple Safari, browser rendering engines, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Open Source, Steve Ballmer, Web Browsers, webkit

Steve Ballmer talks about Open Source web browser

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is not a fan of open source. He recently said that Google Android platform does not pose much threat to their own mobile platform (Windows Mobile).

Reason being Google is not generating much (if any) profits from it.

He was asked if it made sense for the company to spend money and time on improving the rendering engine of Internet Explorer when they can just use an open source web browser engine.

He responded: “There will still be a lot of proprietary innovation in the browser itself so we may need to have a rendering service. 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 admitted that Microsoft took a lot of time in launching Internet Explorer 7 and most of it was because of the Vista operating system which literally took ages to come out.