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Microsoft kicks off second browser war
Microsoft kicked off the Second Browser War last week.Nearly nine weeks after the release of Firefox 3.0, Microsoft has finally decided to give the folks at Mozilla some competition by releasing Internet Explorer 8, which has many of the same features as Firefox.
- By Scott Shuey, Chief Business Reporter
- Published: 23:53 August 29, 2008
Microsoft kicked off the Second Browser War last week.Nearly nine weeks after the release of Firefox 3.0, Microsoft has finally decided to give the folks at Mozilla some competition by releasing Internet Explorer 8, which has many of the same features as Firefox.
There is one small caveat: it's still in beta testing. An official release isn't expected until later this year.
Now, saying that Microsoft is giving Firefox, as well as other browsers such as Safari and Opera, competition may be rather silly. Microsoft's Internet Explore has long been the king of browsers. In fact, no one has even come close to beating Microsoft since the Browsers Wars of the early '90s. Numbers vary, but IE7, the current official release, is still the preferred way to access the internet by 60-70 per cent of computer users.
That's a significant drop from mid-2005, when Market Share, a company that tracks online browser usage, put Microsoft's dominance at 86 per cent. The reason for the drop is simple. Over the last few years alternative browsers have started coming out with more options than the old Blue E.
Call Microsoft a little slow off the mark. Why the world's largest producer of retail software allowed itself to be beat is a hard question to answer (another way of saying I haven't heard of any good theories yet), but the real question is whether IE8 is any good?
Well, actually, it is. Now, I've never liked any of IE previous versions - I've never been a big fan of Safari or Opera, either - and I stubbornly refused to switch from Netscape until Firefox came along. When I downloaded IE8, I wasn't going in with high expectation, so I was surprised to find it on a par with Firefox 3.0. It even offers extra usability with some features, such as allowing users to import online text directly into Microsoft Word.
Now, all that doesn't mean I'm going to switch to IE, yet, but undoubtedly some people will.
Here's where the war starts, almost exactly where it started 15 years ago. If the browser that comes on your computer, ie IE, is as good as the others, why would anyone go looking online for another one. Sure, there will always be someone unhappy with IE, but will there be people unhappy enough to warrant a company like Firefox?
We appliances
There is also the issue of web applications. Many sites have always tailored their application for IE, and Firefox's recent rise in popularity hasn't changed that. Some websites have gone in the opposite direction by developing web applications exclusively for Firefox, but those sites are far from dominant. It's also hard to imagine that anyone looking to drive traffic to their site will go looking for ways to alienate IE users.
Does that mean that alternative browsers are doomed? No, but the odds are against them. Their competition is Microsoft, a company with a history of great innovation and barrels of extra cash, but it is also the company that neglected browser development for most of the '90s. If you really want to judge Microsoft's ability to give consumers usable, feature rich software, I have one word for you: Vista. Just because Microsoft can do it, doesn't mean people will want it. Firefox and the lot still have a chance.
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