robzilla - 4:30 pm on Sep 20, 2012 (gmt 0)

Hard to say. If your web browser is the most popular one, and you want to keep it that way, setting your own 'web standards' may be one way of achieving that. No wonder the IE team jumped on this [windowsteamblog.com ]. But I don't buy into the idea that it was Google's intention to exploit this in order to make money. Their explanation seems quite understandable; you could perhaps even partly blame Apple. Not to say that the fine isn't valid... it wasn't supposed to happen.

But what's worse, really? IE headaches such as your own must have cost the industry billions of dollars by now.