New Name, New Face
1. Drop the Internet Explorer name
Calling a browser Internet Explorer in 2010 would be like Ford still flogging the Taurus brand. It conjures up images of the old Netscape days, when the web was an entirely different place. And by the way, there are plenty of folks out there that believe, right or wrong, that Microsoft won that battle by cheating. Why not call it the Bing Browser? You're hot to push that brand name, and people actually seem to like the Bing search stuff you're doing (those who have tried it, anyway).
2. Redesign the interface from scratch
Every new version of IE looks like a modified version of the one that came before. You can't ship a 2008-looking piece of software in 2010, and changing the name (see #1 above) won't get you anywhere if it still "looks like IE." Don't leave the interface design in the hands of the current Internet Explorer team, or the team that redesigned Office, or the Windows team. Give it to a group of fresh thinkers, like the designers that came up with the excellent Zune desktop software. The Zune app is smooth and clean, borderless, and doesn't rely on the staid icons and scroll bars of the general Windows UI. In other words, it looks decidedly un-Microsoft, and that's the goal here. This isn't to say this future browser should look like the Zune desktop app. Consider, however, that the Zune app does what Windows Media Player does, fundamentally (organize and play music and video files) without looking or behaving anything like it. Don't make IE like you're making another Windows Media Player, make it like you're making a new Zune client.
Just as the Zune software is nothing like WMP, Microsoft's new browser should be nothing like IE.
Start axing buttons and drop-down boxes left and right. Who uses the Home button anymore? People just create new tabs with a default loading page. Reclaim as much space for actual web pages as possible, so we can see more of the sites we visit on those netbooks and ultraportable laptops with small 1280x600 screens. Dump the search box, as Google has done with Chrome - if it's not a URL, the browser should be smart enough to search our bookmarks, history, and the web. While you're at it, get rid of the title bar and status bar, and consider redesigning or moving the tabs and bookmarks bar to maximize the main browser window.
3. Pile on the useful new features
People don't want to browse their search history, they want to search their search history. And why make it a boring list? Let users open a "history tab" that shows sortable thumbnails of previously-visited sites that filter down instantly as you search. Work in some of the super-cool magic of that Pivot application the labs guys kicked out. That's just one simple example of how you should be re-thinking basic browser functions like bookmarks and new tabs/windows. I mean, keeping bookmarks synchronized across your PCs is a no-brainer...you need to go much further.
Next: More ways for Microsoft to build a market-leading browser
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