Mitchell's post got me thinking (and commenting) more about why I think people are mis-reading the Web browser market place.
I don't know how many of you followed my link over there and I think it's almost enough to stand on its own so I'm going to just post my comment here as well.
I’m hearing quite a few claims from the tech press (and others) that we’ve obviously got a healthy environment because Firefox, Safari, and Chrome are all competing well against Microsoft.
The reality is that only Mozilla, with Firefox, has actually managed to pull any significant number of users off of IE.
It’s obviously early for Chrome, so perhaps they will, but they haven’t yet. And Safari has been available on Windows for three times as long as Chrome and it hasn’t even garnered the meager share that Chrome has.
To those who think that “everything is fine,” I say think about the world without Firefox. Without Firefox, Internet Explorer would absolutely dominate with 97% of the Windows desktop.
Let me say that again. Without Firefox, IE would have 97% of the Windows Desktop.
Yes. 97%.
(Safari on Windows has less than half of a percent, Chrome is about one and a quarter percent, and Opera is about three quarters of a percent.)
I do not believe that “everything is fine” when Mozilla is the only thing that stands between Microsoft and it’s dominance over 97% of the Windows desktop.
