Microsoft’s hold over the Internet Browser market has slipped significantly since the emergence of Fire Fox, Opera and Chrome and it is no more a secret. But then as MS has continued to disappoint us with browsers, it is now betting that internet explorer 9 or IE9 will be able to successfully stem the rot in IE’s market erosion.

The company claims that IE9 is now slightly faster than Firefox 3.6 and adheres to HTML standards as well. This will allow IE9 to move beyond browser plug-ins, like the ubiquitous Adobe Flash, to display multimedia content online. But can Microsoft embark on a joyride on the propaganda of speed alone? Only time will tell.

Microsoft has said that it has enhanced IE’s ability to process JavaScript in the background on its own separate processor core. It uses hardware acceleration for playing HTML 5 video and graphics processor for speeding up the representation of texts and graphics. Users can have a feel of the browser as the company has allowed downloads from its Internet Explorer 9 test drive site.

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But will Microsoft’s speed plank be sufficient in drawing people back to the IE? The history is not too rosy for the browser. As Gregg Keizer puts it. “IE has lost approximately 8 percentage points of share as measured by NetApplications.com in the last 12 months, and now accounts for about 62% of all browsers in use. Even the introduction of IE8 a year ago hasn’t stemmed the losses”.

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IE9 is still in its testing stage and experts believe that only speed might not be able to see it through this competitive battle for browser domination especially when there is a vibrant ecosystem of developers who write add-ins for browsers like Chrome and Firefox. Going open source for Microsoft might be well worth a try though, even if it would mean going against policies it has nurtured over the decades. But if at all MS decides to go open, it will definitely be seen as a market-leading innovator. This will go a long way in improving IE’s image.