This is completely wrong:

"The real reason for the acquisition," said John Pescatore, vice president at Gartner and the leader of a four-analyst team that published a brief on Microsoft’s spyware motivations, "is that spyware problems have been making people defect from Internet Explorer. Microsoft has to protect IE until a new version comes out, which won’t be until Longhorn. It has to protect IE now, since any anti-spyware improvements to IE won’t show until Windows XP SP3 is released, which won’t be until the second half of 2005."

There is no mass exodus away from IE (and towards Firefox). Here’s why:

1. A changeover will likely reduce risk in the short term.
2. For enterprises, it is often difficult to complete some sort of switch in the short term.
3. The value proposition for Firefox is more that it is untested than it being necessarily "more secure." If it gets more popular, I would expect it to more likely become a target.
4. The "reduced risk" benefits need to outweigh the added costs of deployment and management, as well as the possibility that websites won’t work as well with a non-IE browser. (Shouldn’t forget potential usability benefits, either).