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According to reports posted on JCXP.net and reposted on tech blog OSnews, Microsoft might switch away from its proprietary rendering engine and instead adopt WebKit as the heart of the next version of Internet Explorer.

If Microsoft moves towards WebKit, there’s a good chance that WebKit will become the default for the emerging Web platform. There were early hopes that Firefox’s Gecko would become the dominant future engine, but after Google’s decision to base its Chrome browser on the open source rendering WebKit it looks as though that engine is on its way to becoming the standard.

Microsoft’s Gazelle project, which is rumored to be the basis of the new post-IE8 browser, is currently under development at Microsoft Research. In addition to WebKit, Gazelle also borrows another feature from Chrome: sandboxing. Plug-ins run as separate, secure processes to help reduce the risk of malware infecting unsuspecting users’ PCs.

This is good news for Web 2.0. The Web’s technologies need a stable foundation and Microsoft’s choice could mean a future for rich Web applications based on established Web standards and open accessibility. It also means that Web designers and developers can quit relying on kludgy hacks to get their code to render correctly in Internet Explorer.