Don’t know if you noticed, but Internet Explorer 8 was released last Thursday. What’s that? You didn’t notice. We neither did most of the online world. Microsoft can’t get much right lately and according to InformationWeek, IE8 is no exception.

As of 8:00 am Monday, IE8 — released Thursday — held 1.86% of the browser market, down from a high of 2.59% on Sunday, according to market watcher Net Applications. The most likely reason for the decline is that early adopters of IE8 are switching back to the more familiar and –at this point — reliable Explorer 7 browser.

Ouch. That is not good. Now combine this bad news with the rumors that IE8 may be Microsoft’s last attempt at a web browser… and then add the fact that Windows 7 is going to have an option to remove IE from the operating system… then well, you have yourself a web browser on life support.

It’s sad really, though not entirely unexpected. IE, like most of Microsoft’s products, became so large, and so dominant, that innovation and creativity were no longer anywhere to be found. New players emerged from the ashes (Firefox from Netscape) that took enough of the market share to make others think they could do it too (Chrome, Opera, et al). And they did. These new browsers started with clean thinking and a cleaner footprint. Everything IE is… slow, large, un-customizable, resource hog… the new browsers are not.

To be honest, I hoped IE8 would be a game changer. I hoped Microsoft would push the other browsers to be even better. I hoped IE8 would be a sign that Microsoft was moving in a new direction. Sometimes we don’t get what we hope for.

So I guess the jury is still out on Microsoft. Maybe Windows 7 will help them recover from the Vista hangover. But if the trends from the article hold true, IE8 is going to need a defibrillation from Microsoft or else we, the general public, are going to pull the plug on IE8 for them.