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The real reason(s) behind Microsoft’s move to exorcise WGA from IE7

Time: 00:37 EST/05:37 GMT | News Source: | Posted By: Kenneth van Surksum

A day after Microsoft rolled out a refresh of Internet Explorer (IE) 7 that no longer requires Windows Genuine Validation (WGA) checks, industry watchers are speculating as to why the company did so.

The real reason(s) behind Microsoft’s move to exorcise WGA from IE7The IE team, for its part, will say nothing more than what it posted on October 4 to the IE Team Blog:

“Because Microsoft takes its commitment to help protect the entire Windows ecosystem seriously, we’re updating the IE7 installation experience to make it available as broadly as possible to all Windows users”

In other words: Microsoft was worried that “pirates” might not be protected by all the security goodness the company has added to IE, so it decided to remove piracy checks from the IE 7 download process.