Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

As much as I believe in the intrinsic merits of freedom and open source, it was MS's money that has shaped browser shares the most and if IE ever goes under 50% (and I pray to the silicon gods every bootup) it will be because Google pays for bundling, Macs get to 30% market share, and/or mobile phones with their bundled browser comes to dominate surfing.

Googles idea of bundling seems like a good idea. Unfortunately, this does not work for Firefox, only for a big company that has clout and cash. Firefox is already include in most Linux distros, but that does not help as long the Linux market share does not go up significantly.

The best bet for Firefox are new web technologies, where IE cannot compete. MS also shut down IE for MAc and made IE a Windows-only application. This may backfire since the market share of non-MS-operating systems (mostly Mac!) is going up and many companies will be looking for a multi-platform browser as their strategic platform for web technologies.

Ephilei, Microsoft's money didn't shape their monopoly and Mozilla's money hasn't been what cut into it by more than 20 points and more than an order of magnitude further than any other Windows browser.

Microsoft illegally leveraged their Windows OS monopoly to get to the dominant monopoly in browsers. It wasn't money. It was positioning and illegal business practices.

Mozilla's Firefox, overwhelmingly from word of mouth, has taken a serious chunk out of that IE monopoly. Over 80% of the people using Firefox heard about it via word of mouth, something that money didn't buy.

The next closest Windows browser has less than 1% of the Windows marketplace. Hell, all of the dozen or so measurable browsers behind Firefox don't add up to more than 2 percentage points of the Windows browser market total.

I'm also going to warn against the emerging conventional wisdom that buying your way onto the desktop via OEMs is a cure-all. Firefox's been included on a number of Windows desktops with very little impact.

Unless someone can buy their way into the _default_browser_ spot through OEMs -- something that has never happened before and I don't see it happening any time soon, just being installed along with a lot of other unrequested software doesn't get you very far.

Second, I'd also warn against hoping that Macs will undo Microsoft's browser monopoly. Yes, Apple is in a position to gain Safari market share by making it the included and default browser, but there are even more people, as a percentage, that are opting out of Safari in favor of Firefox than are opting out of I.E. in favor of Firefox. Where Firefox makes up only about 19% of the Windows browser usage today, Firefox accounts for more than 27% of Mac browser usage. Mac users seem to be the kind of "choice makers" that are willing to consider alternatives at a somewhat higher rate than Windows users. So, with Macs tripling their desktop market share, geting them to 30% of the desktop market, Safari will have only taken about 20% of the browser market from I.E. That's where Firefox is already today.

Finally, even if every phone out there had a Web experience as good as the iPhone (which only accounts for about 1/3 of 1% of the Web usage today,) mobile browsing would still only account for low single digits in the percentage of hours spent browsing. I'd wager that it'll be many years, maybe even a decade before the combined mobile browsers break into the top three spot for usage.

There is no magic bullet. Apple's Mac market share increases are good for Safari and Firefox. Mobile browsing increases will be good for several not-Microsoft browsers including Safari, Firefox, and probably Opera if they can survive without a measurable desktop presence. OEM distribution will help Chrome and it's certainly helping Safari today.

Add it all up, you get what you got today which is that Microsoft has lost almost 30 percent of the web browser market from it's total monopoly just a few years back. But, the big mover in there is clearly Firefox with 20 or so points of that change all by itself and I don't see any groundbreaking and emerging forces that are going to radically alter the landscape.

- A

Another data point for the ‘specific types of websites’ counts: at The Register usage of just the latest version of Firefox recently passed all IE versions added together: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/15/reg_readers_and_firefox/

ADAXL, Firefox has about 200 million users right now accounting for about 20% of the global Web usage.

To get a desktop icon (not default status, just a launcher) from Dell, HP, Sony, etc, costs about $5-$10 per machine.

Assume an amazing conversion rate of 50% (half the people will decide to use your desktop launcher instead of the default browser) then to get the 200 million users Firefox has, the 20% market share that Firefox has, you'd have to spend $2-$4 billion dollars.

And you can't throw that kind of money at the problem all at once. The new machines aren't selling that fast. It'd take you years, maybe as much as a decade, to get to 20% of the market that way.

Lots of people think that OEM distribution is a magic bullet. It's just not. Sure, it's a bullet. But it's an expensive bullet that doesn't have the impact that many people assume it does.

If Google is willing to pay their way onto the desktop, then maybe in 5-10 years, Chrome could get 15-20% of Web usage. That's not a bad thing, but I can think of a lot better ways to spend several billion dollars.

- A

Web developers can help by using modern open standards.

Maybe a quickly fading out (don't annoy people)
"better with
- Firefox
- Safari
- Opera
- Chrome
"

where "better" can be replaced with "faster", "smoother", etc.

http://ajaxian.com/archives/state-of-the-open-web-talk nicely shows what modern technologies are available in browsers, where often IE holds things back by making things impossible, or a hassle (work-arounds).

Hmmm... Again, it seems to me that you're contradicting yourself, Asa.

For example, these 2 quotes: "Second, I'd also warn against hoping that Macs will undo Microsoft's browser monopoly." and "Apple's Mac market share increases are good for Safari and Firefox."
The fact more Mac users move to Firefox (compared to Windows users) is irrelevant to the fact that's one less IE user anyway.

http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,62048599,00.htm

http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,62048599,00.htm

Stifu, I wonder where you found the contradiction. Yes, every new Mac user is a lost IE user - and that means that "Mac market share increases are good for Safari and Firefox." The other quote however refers to the fact that most likely this user would have been lost for Microsoft even if he didn't switch to OS X. I think Asa's argumentation here makes sense (whether it is really accurate is another question and a very difficult one). One only has to read it rather than start complaining about non-existing contradictions.

Hah. I'm not complaining, so you can drop that obnoxious tone.
My message wasn't a personal attack against Asa, I just thought I'd point out something that didn't make much sense to me.

I'm sorry you can't understand the contradiction, although it's simple... Let's try this: "More Mac users means more Firefox/Safari users", and "More Mac users don't help reducing Microsoft's browser monopoly".
Your take on it is your own free interpretation of what he said, and it's... wrong. What you said might have made sense only if *all* Mac users would use alternatives if they weren't on a Mac, which is clearly not realistic. Asa even made that clear by saying Mac users are *more likely* to choose alternatives, not that all of them do. One only has to read it rather than start complaining about non-existing contradictions in people's comments. :)

Sitfu, I didn't read it as a contradiction so much as saying "This helps, but not enough to be the primary factor in overturning Microsoft's dominant position." The talk about there being no magic bullet makes that (IMO) fairly clear.

Yeah... I guess. But then, it's obvious Macs won't "undo" (as in, definitely crush) Microsoft's browser monopoly on their own, considering the amount of Mac users isn't significant enough for that, and won't be significant enough anytime soon, if ever. So yeah, Macs clearly can't win this battle alone, but they still help. Every little bit helps.
Future still looks bright to me. It just takes time for things to move...