Those of you following our twitter feed will be knowing by now, that Balmer made a comment about adopting Webkit for Internet Explorer.

Addressing a developer conference in Sydney Australia, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s ”Developers! Developers! Developers!” chant was met by a student question, ”Why is IE still relevant and why is it worth spending money on rendering engines when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster?”

“That’s cheeky, but a good question, but cheeky,” Ballmer said. “Open source is interesting. Apple has embraced Webkit and we may look at that, but we will continue to build extensions for IE 8.”

So is Microsoft actually looking into adopting WebKit or was it a deflective answer? My guess is the latter. For one, Microsoft has already spent too much time with their Trident rendering engine set to feature in IE 8. The betas has been out for a long time now, and the final version should be out soon. Moving to a different engine would delay the whole process.

Secondly, what of those websites which are designed with IE in mind? Moving to a different rendering engine would again create compatibility issues that both customers and developers aren’t going to take well. And considering the reaction to Vista, Microsoft will always be scared that this will create even more switchers. Of course, when Apple does something like this, the users learn to deal with it, which is ideally the way it is supposed to be. 

Having said that however, the WebKit switch would be ideal for IE. For one, they don’t have to look too much into development of the engine, as Apple is actively developing the open source engine. They could instead spend more time on adding proprietary features to the browser. The engine is super fast, standards compliant, and passes the Acid3 test with flying colours. The benefits are endless!

What’s your take on this? Should we consider this bit of news as ‘news’, or do we just print it out, fold it and throw it in the trash?