Ryan Gavin, senior director of IE business and marketing in an interview with The Register, has affirmed that Microsoft would not put IE9's DirectX 10 based hardware acceleration features in the current version of its browser, IE8 or release IE9 for older PCs still running Windows XP.
While Microsoft's decision in itself is rooted in the fact that it wants Windows 7 to form the basis of future web apps based Microsoft cloud, notes The Reg, it has also left out in the open million of users still running Windows XP to shift to Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox in order to enjoy hardware accelerated web features.
How will this decision affect the market for browser share is still left to be seen, since as of today, Windows XP alone accounts for over 53% of operating systems share vs 22% for Windows 7.
