The flaw was pretty severe, and most customers would have wanted to apply the patch right away. Unfortunately, on this occasion IT Week neglected to give the URL for the patch. One annoyed reader wrote to complain that after exhaustively searching the product pages of Microsoft's site, he still could not find any mention of either the issue or the fix. Of course he was looking in the wrong place. Marketing wisdom says it is tougher to find a new customer than it is to keep an old one.
Nobody expects firms to post bug alerts in flashing red letters on their home pages.
Next to none. Actually, I suppose that it is historical accident. Today we all understand that the Web can do much more but the old mindset has, unfortunately, stuck. But we can learn to undo this failing. For a long time I've admired the way that IBM arranges its site.