Interesting article here:

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/13/0520214&from=rss

On the Microsoft blog "The Old New Thing", the author talks about how Microsoft analyzed lots of crash reports and concluded that overclocking is the cause of many of the crashes reported to them:

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/04/12/407562.aspx

They could very well be right...

• MONEY: There is little money to be made with a more-secure Internet Explorer. People already use it as it is, and Microsoft doesn't sell the software, so there is no financial incentive to put hours upon hours of work into testing the product and getting the bugs out. Windows, too, sells just fine as it is. Sure, the security bugs are embarrassing, but they aren't doing much to the bottom line. (Consider the Windows XP Activation technology, which is a kind of security. It impacts the bottom line directly, so Microsoft has put considerable effort into working the flaws out of this area. Compare that to pop-up blocking or spyware/adware blocking, which is only now getting attention, and apparently only as an add-on product at additional cost.)
• CORPORATE CULTURE: Security isn't "cool" to most people. It's an expectation, an assumption, or a requirement, but it isn't something people look at and say "Wow!" about... This is probably as true inside the Redmond campus as it is in the rest of corporate America. Tell your boss you made the network more secure and you'll probably get a "nice job" answer. Tell them you implemented the latest buzzword technology and you might hear that "Wow!" response. Thus, the corporate culture tends not to reward a company for making a more secure product... and developers tend to place less emphasis on security.
• COMPETITION (LACK THEREOF): I realize that Windows does have competition in the marketplace. Two of its most relevant competitors are Linux and Mac OS X. Linux is a great operating system, superior to Windows in many respects. Mac OS X is also a fine operating system, though in my opinion somewhat incomplete and immature. But neither of these is displacing that many Windows desktops, especially not with home users (think your grandma, aunts, etc.). While the Mac may have enough ease of use, the more popular commercial products (and the latest games) don't run there. Linux (and by virtue of being UNIX-based so does OS X) has a wealth of applications available, but the ease of use still lags behind Windows (and OS X). Microsoft still has the desktop market sewn up, so while Linux and OS X might be (arguably) more secure than Windows, their advantages aren't translating into a lot of pressure on Microsoft. At least not yet.