"The fundamental problem is Microsoft's decision to allow users to continue to view billions of old pages optimized for non-compliant IE 6 and 7 that would otherwise be scrambled in IE 8.

As far as von Tetzchner is concerned, that's not just bad for companies like Opera that must continue wasting time and money simply updating sites built for IE 6 and 7 to work with their browsers."

So...by offering backwards compatibility it means MORE work? Umm, no. If there was NO backwards compatibility we would have to spend shed-loads re-writing all the other websites so that they worked with (like it or not) the market leader.

I'm sorry but if websites X doesn't work in IE8 Joe Public isn't going to blaim M$ and suddenly switch to Opera. No, Joe Public is going to blaim website X and take his business to compeating website Y.