According to Microsoft, IE6 SP1 is the final standalone installation of Internet Explorer. The reason? “Legacy OSes have reached their zenith with the addition of IE 6 SP1. Further improvements to IE will require enhancements to the underlying OS” (emphasis is mine).
Now call me crazy, but Mozilla and Opera have managed to create vastly superior browsers to IE on the same OS (transparent PNG support, support for a slew of standards, faster rendering, etc). So obviously that reason is bullshit.
So what could the real reason be? Perhaps they want to push their next OS (Longhorn) on the back of, in part at least, the new version of IE that will be included. At the moment, I sure as hell don’t want it. The freedom-crippling components, sorry, DRM software are off-putting enough.
The truth is that there are vastly superior browsers to Internet Explorer already available, it’s (slowly) losing market share, and Microsoft are getting desperate. Good luck to them, but I hope the general public wake up and get a decent browser first.