browser

The Browser Wars: 2009, a Tipping Point for Microsoft?

Jerry Sheehan — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 10:40:06 -0800

Description

The early days of the World Wide Web (Web) saw intense competition among developers of the "killer ap" aka the Web Browser (browser). NCSA's Mosaic browser user base moved quickly to Netscape's Communicator, setting up the browser battle royale between Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape in 1995. By mid-1999 the first browser war was over, decisively won by Microsoft's Internet Explorer which claimed more then 80% of the market.[1]

Netscape's defeat in the first browser war led to the development of a bold alternative strategy with the release of the Netscape source code to the open source community and the creation of the Mozilla Foundation and the Firefox browser. The second browser war would start slowly with other companies such as Opera entering and eventually other major players such as Apple (Safari/2003) and Google (Chrome/2008) showing interest.

As we enter 2009, the first signs of a renewed browser war are showing. In November 2008, Firefox's share of the browser market reached above 20%. Most analyst believe Mozilla will continue to grow in market share in 2009. John Lily, the CEO of Mozilla, explains the importance of this benchmark "Reaching 20 percent worldwide market share is a significant milestone for Firefox and Mozilla. It's a huge achievement by the global Mozilla community, one that just a few years ago most would have considered impossible. The open web is more vibrant than ever, and the thousands of Mozilla contributors around the world have played a major role in making it that way."[2]

Microsoft ended 2008, with about 68% of the browser market share. Competition from new browsers such as Google's Chrome account for a fraction of their loss with the biggest driver being Internet Explorer users, in particular IE6, transitioning to newer browsers.[3] Internet Explorer 6 has been widely criticized among the developer community for everything ranging from fundamental security holes to its proprietary Web extensions. Developer discontent grew to such levels last year that a group called "SaveTheDevelopers" arose to encourage users to abandon IE 6.[4] Perhaps most troubling for Microsoft, two out of three users who leave IE go to their main competitor, Mozilla.[3]

There are also signs that Google and others may influence the browser battle through their on-line services. In December 2008, Google listed IE6 as an unsupported browser for their free email service, Gmail. Users accessing Gmail with IE6 receive a message telling them that they can get faster access by using another browser. Google then directly links to their Chrome Browser and Firefox. While other browsers such as Safari and IE 7 are listed as being "supported" they aren't featured on the link list of alternatives presented to IE6 users.

The reason this change is important is that the largest user group traditionally accounting for Microsoft's Internet Explorer's dominance are business users. These users simply found it easier to use the browser bundled with the Windows operating system. If premium on-line services used for free by small and medium size companies begin to prefer Chrome or Firefox it could be a powerful inducement for millions of users to change their primary browser.[5]

2009 will likely continue to see major developments in the battle for market share. The Chrome browser from Google will move from being a Windows only technology to embracing Apple computers and other platforms, including perhaps mobile devices. Freely available on-line tools, or cloud computing services, may escalate their preference for particular browsers which could substantially alter the browser ecosystem. Perhaps the most interesting companies to watch in this regards will be corporations such as Amazon that don't have their own browsing platform but could make major waves in the market by partnering with a company such as Google or the Mozilla Foundation.

One thing is for certain as we begin 2009, Microsoft can no longer take for granted they will own the browser marketplace.

Computer & Information Science

Source

[1]"Browser Wars", Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars
[2]"Firefox Share Tops 20% for November", NetApplications, Market Share, December 1, 2008, http://www.netapplications.com/newsarticle.aspx?nid=45
[3]"How Serious is the Market Share Loss of Microsoft's Internet Explorer", Wolfgang Gruener, Trendwatch, TGDaily, December 23, 2008, http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/40701/113/
[4]"Save the Developers! Stop Using Internet Explorer 6", Eric Schonfeld, TechCrunch, March 25, 2008, http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/25/save-the-developers-stop-using-internet-explorer-6/
[5]"Google Tells Users to Drop IE6", Christian Zibreg, Software, TGDaily, December 31, 2008, http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-40785-140.html

Chrome and Gears: The Web Gets a New Engine

Jerry Sheehan — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:09:45 -0700

Description

The primary technology used by individuals to access the Web, the Web Browser, has not undergone substantial transformation since the creation of the first browser (Mosaic) by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in 1992. At that time, the web was primarily a document repository without the rich media types, interactivity, or proliferation of social information that is the foundation of our Web 2.0 ecosystem. While browsers have certainly improved in speed and features, the underlying document-centric mindset has dominated the browser paradigm.

Last week Google announced the release of their first browser, code named Chrome. Chrome takes a very different approach to the Web, one that is built not only on the current foundation of web technologies, but is built in recognition of the importance of javascript to the modern web experience and the emergence of web applications as a way of working. In this sense, one of the most important components of Chrome may well be the extension of Google Gears and an embrace of cloud computing. Google has a great illustrated "comic book" that explains some of the underlying philosophy and technologies used in Chrome.[1]

The first version of Chrome is a windows-only application but ports to other operating systems are under active development. Importantly, all of the underlying source code for the browser has been made open source and is available for the worldwide network of software developers to hack, improve, and test. Within the first day of its availability on the Web, Chrome had risen to being 1.7% of the global browser market.

What might be the underlying impact of Chrome:

1) A Substantial New Software Project for Google: Clearly Chrome is a cornerstone of the web experience that Google wants to develop and exploit. The highest levels of Google have publicly stated that this is a major project and Google's creators being on hand for the software announcement and confirm this fact.

2) Wither Mozilla? Google has been a primary supporter of Mozilla and was a critical ally in the fight to keep the browser viable when its market share was being attacked by Microsoft's Internet Explorer. While Google still talks the Mozilla talk, it is clear to most analyst that Chrome poses a threat to Mozilla. This will come about in likely one of two ways: 1) Google will likely explicitly decrease their support of Mozilla as they make a greater resource investment in Chrome. It is questionable who will step into the void left. 2) Since the Chrome code base is open source the legions of mozilla developers may begin to invest their time on Chrome as opposed to continued work on the Mozilla code-base. This attention deficit could decrease new releases effectively killing the browser in the uber-comeptitive mindshare battle.[4]

[3] The Mobile Browser Battle Will Heat Up: Chrome is likely part of a multi-platform campaign by Google with an increasing emphasis on the mobile device needs. The Google investment in Android provides a hardware platform on which Chrome may be optimized, and from the discussion of the motivation for Chrome by Google, they both use the same underlying software architecture (webkit). This common starting point will allow Google to place significant pressure, if they choose, on other mobile software providers. [5] This is a critical battleground. Remember that while today's Web is built around desktop personal computers the future is a billion mobile devices accessing global information.

[4] It's About the Gears, Stupid: It would be a mistake to look at the Google effort as being primarily about an effort to win the browser wars dominated by Internet Explorer (72.15% of global use).6 Instead, Chrome is likely focused in large part on trying to spread the adoption of Google Gears. Gears is Google's approach to distributed "cloud based" applications. Imagine a world in which Google provides not your browser, but your mail, your word processor, your spreadsheet, your contacts, and your slides.[4]

Computer & Information Science

Source

[1]http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/big_00.html
[2]"A week of Chrome: Google's browser gets 7% share at Ars", Ryan Paul, Published: September 10, 2008, http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080910-aweek-of-chrome-googles-browser-gets-7-share-at-ars.html
[3]"Google brings out big guns in support of Chrome",Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service, MacWorld, September 2, 2008, http://www.macworld.com/article/135341/2008/09/chrome.html
[4] "The Importance of Chrome", Alex Russel, September 1, 2008, http://alex.dojotoolkit.org/2008/09/the-importance-of-chrome/
[5] "How Chrome Puts the Skids under Nokia", Twm Davies, The Register, September 5, 2008, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/05/chrome_mobile_analysis/
[6]Market Share by Net Applications, http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0