January 7, 2009
magic bullets?
Over the last couple of months there's been a lot of talk on the blogs about how Google's homepage promotions of Chrome along with the upcoming OEM bundling deals is going to mean huge user numbers for Chrome in very short order.
I'm not so sure though.
One reason I'm skeptical is that for a time Google distributed Firefox with its Google Pack, advertised Firefox on the Google Search page, and even paid people $1/download through its AdSense Referrals program and all of that together never amounted to more than a few percentage points of Firefox's total user acquisition.
Another thought is that if OEM bundling was a magic bullet, then how did Microsoft lose 8% of the browser user share last year while shipping bundled as the default on 300 million new computers.
Here's how we grew ~22% of the Web browser market:
Average daily downloads for each new version of Firefox. Firefox 3.0 is averaging just over 1.2M dl/day.
It didn't come overnight, but we've developed a substantial distribution channel with simple downloads from the Web. Where just a few years and a few versions ago, we were getting a few hundred thousand downloads of Firefox every day, we're now seeing well over a million.
We will have more Firefox downloads this year than there will be new PCs shipping with IE. Or, to put it another way, if one were to compete with Firefox's downloading distribution via PC OEM distribution, it would take shipping on pretty much every single new machine.
I'd go a step further and say that shipping on a new machine isn't likely sufficient. It would take being shipped as the default browser on most new machines to be competitive with what we've built in Web downloads over the years.
What do you all think? Will Chrome distribution at the Google websites and through OEM bundling lead to massive success this year?
reactions, thoughts, comments, etc.
Posted by: Ben Basson | January 7, 2009 5:00 PM
I guess it's also about positioning. For example, it probably matters which browser appears under "Internet" in the Windows Start Menu:
http://www.windowsvistauserguide.com/vista2/start_menu/new_start_menu_layout.jpg
It might matter which browser starts when you type "http://foobar.com" in the Run text box.
Posted by: Robert O'Callahan | January 7, 2009 9:02 PM
It also matters that it's already installed, not just an installer icon/package sitting on the desktop or buried as "additional software" on the start menu somewhere.
There are several levels of bundling and it's not clear yet what Google's going after or what they'll succeed at getting.
Just one more reason that downloads -- someone intentionally going to Mozilla's website to download and install Firefox, are probably way more effective than bundling deals.
- A
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | January 7, 2009 9:06 PM
I'd say it will help Chrome to gain marketshare at the current stage. Like you said, "Google Pack, advertised Firefox on the Google Search page" etc. did help "a few percentage points", so I guess it will help Chrome to ascend to over 5% in the short term, but after that, it will need a lot more than just "Google Pack, advertised Firefox on the Google Search page" etc. for it to gain more marketshare over that.
So in the end, it will work, when your marketshare is low, to boost it up several percentage points for the short term. But it won't work if you try to depend on it to get big marketshare in the long term.
Posted by: tickeds | January 8, 2009 1:44 AM
Hey Asa, great post, thanks. I sincerely hop you're right! :-)
Posted by: Tristan | January 8, 2009 6:34 AM
Google will push very hard this year, as they must take every bit of revenue they can in these conditions.
But others will do it, too. In todays news, Google lost partnership with Dell to Microsoft. So, on the OEMs side, which might be more important, Google actually may lose.
On the other hand, I don't think that Google can get some huge amounts of clikcs from its network.
But obviously, they will work hard, and they might get something.
Posted by: Ivan Ičin | January 8, 2009 8:03 AM
Oh, I don't know. It's a good browser. How hard can they be pushing it if I don't see it mentioned on the Google main page?
Posted by: VanillaMozilla | January 8, 2009 9:03 AM
Oh, I don't know. It's a good browser. How hard can they be pushing it if I don't see it mentioned on the Google main page?
Posted by: VanillaMozilla | January 8, 2009 9:04 AM
"if one were to compete with Firefox's downloading distribution via PC OEM distribution"
Google's main goal may be to compete with IE (not Firefox) with this PC OEM distribution stuff. This is Microsoft's turf, after all.
Posted by: YO | January 8, 2009 2:39 PM
It seems to me that there are two populations: people who use the default browser and those that use their preferred browser. Occasionally people move from column A to column B, but basically if IE (or Chrome or Safari on Macs) is the default browser on a computer, then there is a large segment of the population that will never switch. These people would never go to a website to download and install a browser because most don't even know what a browser really is.
Firefox will continue to grow through the download channel (by either getting people to switch columns or by convincing people that Firefox should be their preferred browser), but will make little impact in the "default" market. Chrome will struggle with the "preferred" market for a while, but will get many eyeballs if they can become the default browser.
One of the big reasons for Firefox's success is how bad IE was/is. If people were content with IE and MS continued to update it with features people wanted, not as many people would have moved from the "default" group to the "preferred" group.
Posted by: noneyet | January 8, 2009 3:07 PM
Let's hope so! Google chrome is a great browser, why firefox advocates such as u should seem so threaten seems silly... The goal is to have a more open web right? With more features and more commonly shared features? Then I see chrome and googles ablitity to distribute it a great win for us all... Web is fun if ms makes a better browser sweet it's not a reliogion after all it's information, fun , etc...
Posted by: Todd fisher | January 8, 2009 8:16 PM
Todd, I'm not at all threatened. I'm doubtful that Google has the magic bullet that so many assume. That is all.
- A
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | January 17, 2009 1:52 PM
When you ship on a computer, you presumably get your application's icon in a prominent place. If your browser is the default, then it gets to open web links whenever another application provides one for the user to click on. From my perspective, that's happening less and less. How often are people running into this scenario today?
Maybe I'm missing something, but I'd imagine that it's a lot more common for people to simply open a browser that is installed by its icon (or Start menu item) and the likelihood of their being diverted from their choice browser is minimal (and certainly the impact on market share will be minuscule).
In a world where some of the best applications for tasks including email, time management/calendars, networking, instant messaging, photo and video sharing and news reading are accessed through a browser, what significant cases are left where the default browser setting really matters?