If webkit is so fast in Safari and Chrome, why doesn't Microsoft adapt it for IE?

Microsoft has a monopoly on it's software, that is, it has taken a large portion of a market and has made it's own users and customers dependent on it's products. To keep the monopoly going, Microsoft must compete with open standards and products by creating their own that only work with their own... An example is DirectX, besides the one in only 3rd party Sega Dreamcast system. IE still has majority (though it's slipping more and more), and has been able to keep it going so long using it's own standards and plugins like ActiveX, over the W3C ones. Since Microsoft's victory over Netscape Navigator and Communicator in 2000, Internet Explorer's 95% share has dropped down to less than 60% in 10 years, the trend has been mostly linear as IE has only maintained it's height due to a dependent user base.. though as users become less dependent and are allowed or able to use others like Firefox, it'll continue to drop.

Around November 2008, Steve Ballmer was asked this very question by a College student:

"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?" - Student

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

Honestly, I think it's great that IE still uses Trident. It introduces much more competition into the layout engine community than there would be if it were just Gecko (Firefox), WebKit (Safari, Chromium, and then, IE), and Presto (Opera). As you can see with IE9, Microsoft is making a huge effort to bring Internet Explorer up to the head of the pack, and I believe they are doing an excellent job of it. I'm usually all for open source, but when it comes to developing websites, all that matters is that it is standards-compliant and it works on most browsers.

I don't know but there is an application that uses chromes rendering frame work in IE (if the site is written for it) called Google Chrome Frame

Because Microsoft likes to close everything, and webkit is an open standard.

In IE9 they are making hardware accelerated graphics using DirectDraw (I think). From what I've seen right now what they are doing to IE9 is faster than the other browsers. I don't know the specifics, but I don't think they could make hardware acceleration work as well with Webkit.

Also web developers would have an extreemly boring job if all browsers rendered the same. :P

because they secretly want ie users to give up hope and kill themselves so they dont buy apple computers or linux machines.

Microsoft use trident and for the majority of the web it works well. Web devs try to build their sites to work with IE as it is the most popular. If you want to use IE to use webkit use google chrome frame. :) vote me up

Because nobody uses IE, anyway!

Ok but really, its like if Sun used the linux kernel in Solaris, it would break updates and microsoft already invested a lot in IE.

Well most it guys use ie. so ie 9 preview is fast with youtube. if it is webkit good for microsoft. if not somebody need to e-mail them about it. and i need ie any way for a stable bases web brwoser but chromeium is better.

Making a change like that will require massive changes to the IE code. Microsoft will not do that unless it is profitable to do. On top of that, they already have a large market share and a very large install base.

A user getting infected because they use IE instead of firefox means nothing to microsoft since it is not effecting their wallets.