After the debacle around the by Microsoft sponsored internet browser security survey the Redmond company continues the smug and now publicly doubts the download numbers for the open source Firefox browser.

Senior Executive Any Barzdukas went as far as saying that the celebrated 1billion downloads “interesting maths” were. Barzdukas, who surprisingly is General Manager at MSFT in charge of the much loathed Internet Explorer, did not detail her claim but let some vague Marketing smug lose:

“As with any marketing statement, I’d encourage people to be somewhat sceptical about large number claims,” she said.

“It’s an interesting number and I have not seen the math [but] how many internet connected users are there? 1.1 billion, 1.5 billion, something in that area.”

The Executive further announced that the company will continue to support its Achilles heel, Internet Explorer 6 because users apparently are satisfied with the browser or not aware of the availability if newer versions for the browser.

“The reason that a consumer would still be on IE6 at this point is a lack of awareness or the ‘good enough’ problem,” she said. “If you’re satisfied with what you’re doing and you’re not particularly curious about new technology and don’t really care, upgrading sounds like a hassle. Part of our communication needs to be making clear that there are significant advantages to upgrading to a modern browser.”

Personally I would say that the main reason users still use the security flawed IE6 browser the, just as security flawed ActiveX script, applications are which are used on many internet and intranet websites which require IE6. Not the fact that users can not be bothered to upload. Many a system administrator MUST continue to block updates because companies will not make resources to upgrade large intranets, relying on since IE7 deprecated code.

Not so surprisingly, Firefox has since long surpassed the popularity of IE6 and continues to grow in popularity.

[Via]