History
In 2001, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 6 as an update to Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT 4.0, and Windows 2000 and included it by default in Windows XP. With the release of IE6 Service Pack 1 in 2003, Microsoft announced that future upgrades to Internet Explorer would come only through future upgrades to Windows, stating that "further improvements to IE will require enhancements to the underlying OS."
On February 15, 2005 at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announced that Microsoft was planning a new version of Internet Explorer that would run on Windows XP. Both he and Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of the Internet Explorer team, cited needed security improvements as the primary reason for the new version.
The first beta of IE7 was released on July 27, 2005 for technical testing, and a first public preview version of Internet Explorer 7 (Beta 2 preview: Pre-Beta 2 version) was released on January 31, 2006.
The final public version was released on October 18, 2006. On the same day, Yahoo! provided a post-beta version of Internet Explorer 7 bundled with Yahoo! Toolbar and other Yahoo!-specific customizations.
In late 2007 Microsoft announced that IE7 would not be included as part of Windows XP SP3, with both Internet Explorer 6 and 7 receiving updates.
On October 8, 2007, Microsoft removed the Windows Genuine Advantage component of IE7, allowing it to be downloaded and installed by those without a genuine copy of Windows.
Within a year after IE7's release (end of 2006 to end of 2007) support calls to Microsoft had decreased 10-20%.
On 16 December 2008, a security flaw was found in Internet Explorer 7 which can be exploited so that crackers can steal users' passwords. The following day, a patch was issued to fix the flaw, estimated to have affected around 10,000 websites.
Read more about this topic: Internet Explorer 7
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