I always assumed it was to publicise the capability --- webmasters would see the requests for them and find out what this strange favicon.ico file was. If Micr

I always assumed it was to publicise the capability --- webmasters would see the requests for them and find out what this strange favicon.ico file was. If Microsoft had stuck to the <link> approach, they would have had to rely on other methods for informing webmasters, and their advantage over Netscape would have been slightly less.