I hadn’t seen the news anywhere that Internet Explorer 7 was going to be delivered as a high priority update, thus automatically installing it for the large percentage of the populace that uses automatic updates… in fact, the first hint I had was when the Internet Explorer 7 Blocker Toolkit showed up on my Microsoft Downloads notification list.

My first reaction was to think that Microsoft is loosing it’s mind, and is so fractured internally that one group is actually trying to prevent the distribution of Internet Explorer 7. However, after visiting the download site I quickly realized that this “Blocker” only blocks automatic deployment by Windows Update. It doesn’t stop people from installing it by hand (through the update site or otherwise). Essentially, it’s a tool for corporate IT departments that want to postpone the upgrade until they can thoroughly test it — not trusting Microsoft to decide when IE7 is ready for prime time. OK, so it’s still slightly wierd, but at least in this light, it doesn’t look like Microsoft in-fighting ;-).

Edit

I had a look around, and they’ve got screenshots of the upgrade process on the IE Blog, and I’m now midly reassured that I’m not going to get a phone call from my mother trying to figure out what happened to her browser. I mean, I may still get a call … IE7 doesn’t look at all like IE6, but at least she’ll know what happened (from the looks of it, there will be a clear screen letting her know she’s upgrading IE), so she’ll just be wanting to know how to get her old interface back, and I’ll be well prepared with the easy answer: Just download Firefox mom.

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