Rumors are circulating that Microsoft is working on a new web browser to compete with Google Chrome and Firefox.
Spartan, the codename for what some thought was Internet Explorer 12, is actually a new Microsoft web browser altogether, which will ship with the upcoming Windows 10, accordin gto a ZDnet report.
There's also this tweet from Thomas Nigro, a Microsoft Student Lead and VLC developer, "Ok so Microsoft is about to launch a new browser that's not Internet Explorer and will be the default browser in Windows 10. Wow."
ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley reports that this new browser is a departure from Internet Explorer, the Microsoft browser whose relevance has waned in recent years. According to Foley, it will be a "lightweight" browser that looks and feels more like the Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers. Also, recent Microsoft behavior tends that there is also a possibility of this browser to be ported to non-Windows devices.
With Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome grabbing so much of the desktop market-and Apple Safari, Google Chrome, and Google's Android browser dominating the mobile market, Internet Explorer is no longer the force it once was. There was a time when it handled about over 90 percent of all web traffic on desktop and laptop machines, but according to research outfit Net Applications, its share has now dropped to 58 percent. On mobile, its share is about 2 percent.
Internet Explorer is coming up on its 20th birthday in August 2015. Whether Spartan will overtake IE completely, leaving IE 11 as its final version, is unknown. Contacted about the rumor, Microsoft said that it had "nothing to share" regarding any rumors of a new browser.
Microsoft is expect to release Windows 10 sometime in the summer of 2015. A January 21 event designed to showcase Windows 10 features may shed more light on the Spartan browser rumor.
