Internet technology news sites are reporting the death of Internet Explorer (IE), following Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Chris Capossela essentially announcing as much last week.

Has Microsoft been spying on the Google searches of Internet Explorer users in order to use the data to enhance their own Microsoft Bing search engine, to make it more competitive with Google? According to Google, who claims to have caught MS watching their own IE users, tapping their Google searches and using the information gleaned from those searches to make their Bing searches more accurate.

Microsoft has just announced an emergency patch for both Internet Explorer (IE) and Office Products, and it is recommended that everyone install this patch ASAP (link to patch included below). This affects Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) and Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) as well as any Microsoft Office Product with ActiveX, including Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Microsoft Access.

In a move sure to have Microsoft’s legal eagles tearing their hair out, Microsoft Partner Group Manager Simon Aldous, during an interview with Britain’s Intent Media’s PCR publication, acknowledged that Microsoft has been aiming to “create a Mac look and feel.”

As the Apple iPhone app store and T-Mobile G1 phone application market show signs of becoming more open, Microsoft has gone in the opposite direction, issuing a flat-out Mobile Market ban from their Mobile 2 Market applications market on several genre of applications, including alternate browsers or search clients. In otherwords, you and your Windows Mobile phone will remain captive and chained to only Microsoft applications.

Perhaps you’ve heard about Microsoft’s WIndows Live new “Family Safety” software, which you can install on your Windows computer, so that your children can safely surf the web without fear of exposure to material that is not family friendly – or ‘family safe’. Apparently in Microsoft’s view this includes competitor Google, although oddly it does not include their own similar search engine, Live.com.

While a Microsoft Zune Phone has been rumoured for months, no less a reliable source than Barrons says that a Zune Phone will be out by the first week of January. The Zune Phone, rumoured to be the industry-whispered “Project Pink”, will be unveiled at CES, say industry insiders.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have all signed on to the Global Initiative Network, pledging to protect the privacy of their users around the world, including – perhaps particularly – users in countries such as China, where demands that ISPs rat out their users are routinely made.