It's a pretty important day in the online calendar for geeks like us, as Microsoft are bowing to EU pressure to offer their customers a choice of Internet Browser. This is important because competition breeds innovation. Microsoft were sitting on their laurels with IE6 for five years before the release of 7. While the tech savvy moved on to next generation browsers such as Opera, Safari and FireFox, may people found themselves tied into the IE brand, stifling competition, severely limiting what web designers like us could achieve in terms of usability and accessibility as we tried to accommodate IE's quirks and bugs. While a substantial upgrade, 7, when it did eventually come out was still years behind FireFox and Safari.

But this isn't just needless Microsoft ranting. Providing it's customers with a choice will benefit the Internet Explorer brand; when IE 9 is released it's going to have to be as secure as FireFox and as standards compliant as Safari and Opera, otherwise people simply won't use it. With the push towards CSS3, HTML5 and Google's foray into the browser market, we may be entering an internet golden age.