A good article! I'd never considered some of those points. The key one for me is laid out in your statement: "operating systems necessarily move slowly, while browsers have to move fast" Chris
TechCrunch reports that IE6 market share has declined to 7.6% of all traffic - really good news indeed! At Zoho, we look forward to officially stopping support for IE6 - the day cannot arrive too soon for us. The more interesting story is that Microsoft's share of browser "market" (if indeed there is such a thing as the browser market anymore) is down to a little over 54% and it looks like there will be even more declines ahead.
Why is Microsoft losing share? I would submit that it ultimately had to do with their fateful decision to tightly weld together the browser and the operating system. That must be the most bone-headed business decision in Microsoft's history. Let's count the costs: a) they got branded an illegal monopolist by a court b) as a direct consequence, they paid billions in fines and damages, to the government and to other vendors; and, finally c) they are losing market share right and left in the very browser market they attempted to corner with their welding-together tactic. Other than that, it was not a bad move.
Why do I attribute their loss of market share to that decision? In a nutshell, operating systems necessarily move slowly, while browsers have to move fast, because the underlying technologies and standards (HTML, CSS, Javascript, mobile displays) are all evolving rapidly. Microsoft, of course, knew that when they welded them together, but they did it anyway in order to cut off Netscape's "oxygen supply". In a twist of karma, in doing so, they also crippled their own ability to evolve the browser rapidly, because they had to maintain the legal fiction (the court rejected their claim, so the "fiction" part is accurate) that the browser is an intrinsic part of the operating system. Note that Microsoft went well beyond merely bundling together IE with Windows - as an example, WordPad is bundled with Windows, but no one thinks that it is an intrinsic part of Windows, in the same way, say, memory management or the file system is. Microsoft's goal wasn't just to make it convenient for the customer by bundling the browser in, they actually actively made it difficult to uninstall their browser. As a direct result, Windows XP and IE6 were joined at the hip and it was actually non-trivial to upgrade to IE7 on XP (you are upgrading the operating system!), and most people never attempted it. Ultimately this crippled Microsoft's own speed of execution on the browser: think of the number of updates, major and minor, that Firefox, Safari, Opera or Chrome have on a regular basis, and compare that to the glacial progress made on IE.
Ultimately, people started leaving the Microsoft's browser plantation, and started installing Firefox. The resurgence of the web, actively aided by Firefox, paved the way for the reemergence of the Mac as a viable computing platform, which further eroded Microsoft's browser dominance. In another fateful decision, Microsoft had decided not to support IE on the Mac (another consequence of their pretense that IE is an intrinsic part of Windows), so Safari and Firefox would rule the roost on the Mac.
The predictable consequence is that there is a whole generation of internet users who don't ever touch IE. We test on IE in Zoho, but it is a struggle to actually get anyone in the company to actually use IE on a regular basis. We sometimes have to declare "IE days" in order to force people to use and test on IE.
Microsoft aimed the gun at Netscape, and shot itself in the foot.
A good article! I'd never considered some of those points. The key one for me is laid out in your statement: "operating systems necessarily move slowly, while browsers have to move fast" Chris
Karma... Karma... Karma.... Its all Karma... That makes a good song... What say Microsoft!
[..] Why Microsoft is Losing Browser Share… Zoho [..]
[..] link:Why Microsoft is Losing Browser Share | Zoho Blogs [..]
[..] Why Microsoft is Losing Browser Share [..]
I'm not convinced this is the real reason. They are losing share because they are not doing a whole lot to make IE standards compliant as well as the fact that more plugins exist for FireFox.
"We sometimes have to declare 'IE days' in order to force people to use and test on IE." Yeah..its very true. Even i find so tough to convince my web developers to use IE. We also force the developers to unit test the web application on IE by declaring IE days
Wow! You're so anti-Microsoft.DId Microsoft reject funding you and hence the vendetta? Get over it man! Since you're so into analyzing news, here's one for you -- Sabeer Bhatia -> Hotmail -> Microsoft -> lots of money -> that money into Zoho -> Thats what pays your salary! So I'd say stop bashing others & concentrate on your product ;)
Ah strike that last comment. Sabeer Bhatia runs Live-cosument.s my bad. But you're still anti-microsoft :P
not quite sure of the direction of arrows in the previous post ... if money has to flow in the direction of the arrows ( as it has to "salary" ) then money should flow from MS to HOTMAIL to Bhatia-JI but actually it is shown the other way !! or am i too dumb to understand this post ?
I too always try to avoid IE all the time... my favorite is safari..also use FF.
[..] Microsoft has tied Internet Explorer close to Windows even though you can install other browsers. Some say this could be why Microsoft islosing the browser wars. [..]
This is pretty funny, considering Zoho's whole offering is based on Ajax, a technology developed by Microsoft. It seems that you're basing your product strategy on a grudge.
"Ajax, a technology developed by Microsoft" Since when??? The most important part (JavaScript/ECMA Script) was invented by Brendan Eich who was working for Netscape at that time and is currently at Mozilla. XML was co-invented by Tim Bray who never worked for Microsoft but worked at the University of Waterloo at that time. He was later contracted by Netscape and works now at Sun (Or should I say Oracle)
Too emotional
Love your declaration of IE days. I actually had to do this for myself occasionally in order to remember people still use it.
AJAX wasn't invented by anybody. It's a technology we all used since the 90s but nobody ever gave a name to. hell, most "ajax" should really just called "aj" since it doesn't really use xml.
I'm not sure what you mean, I run many sites (like Webmaster and SEO) and IE is above 65% in all (70% in most). Firefox around 20% and after it, Safari, Chrome and Opera around 15%. IE6 is a really buggy Browser, every developer knows, but if you develop for Web, you have to try everything in IE first, then Firefox and then Safari. (Nobody really checks Chrome or Opera). Lots of people didn't upgrade to IE7 because they are not using a genuine Windows Copy and the installer doesn't let you if so. BTW, I use FireFox since version 1.5 as my default browser, but it was always because the many add on i use. And my second option would be Opera, not Safari nor Chrome... Alex
Ajax, a technology developed by Microsoft... @MikemuchL: get your facts right Great post Sridhat!
I use zoho biz, and IE8. I've found hardly any difference in speed between it and Firefox 3.5. Most people in my company use IE 7 or 8. Matt
the tactic actually seemed to work pretty well against Netscape. we might very well have still had NS around competing with ms for office, or enterprise, share had they not decimated the browser leverage netscape originally created. of course, you could also argue that destroying NS was a quick way to create 100s of other competitors from the remnants -- many, many innovative startups have sprung forth from the netscape ruins, and there are netscapees doing great things all over the place. so at the very least, thank you MS for helping create that ecosystem :)
The kernel of Ajax is using XMLHttpRequest, developed by Microsoft. Here's background from one of its developers (no longer with MS): http://www.alexhopmann.com/xmlhttp.htm
Our developers consider IE to be THE STANDARD browser during implementation :) Here is quote "if it works on IE it works on any browser" !! Btw ... why did you leave the next-gen-browser IE8?
Surprised by the lack of public support and adoption for Chrome. Ever used it? Faster than God. Open new tabs as fast as you can click CTRL+T. IE takes almost 15 seconds to load...Chrome, 2 seconds. Don't even get me started on the speed of database queries with IE VS. CHROME. Chrome's underlying developmental infrastructure puts it head-and-shoulders about all others. And I mean ALL OTHERS. Once you start using Chrome...all others seem like Snail Pacing.
[..] Why Microsoft is Losing Browser Share | Zoho Blogs– Why is Microsoft losing share? I would submit that it ultimately had to do with their fateful decision to tightly weld together the browser and the operating system. That must be the most bone-headed business decision in Microsoft's history [..]
[..] nei confronti degli altri browser. Sulblog di Zohoè apparsa una interessante analisi di cosa stia succedendo al browser di casa Microsoft. [..]
I envy you for not being forced to use IE every day due to sloppy non-standards compliant CMS's. On top of that, about half of my fellow employees use IE as their primary browser. Unbelievable! I liked you article. Any type of MS bashing is well off in my book :)
[..] Via |Blogs.zoho.com [..]
Mr.CEO, MS Bashing is a very old fashioned way of gaining market attention. When you talk about Karma, you taking god's place and Karma is a confusing competition with dharma in a business world. Left to your standards of interpreting the market dynamics and if Zoho ever becomes a market leader (which we know it never will) you might shoot yourself in your head. Stand up and deliver results with your products, toxic blogging will only earn you the loser tag along with your big brother in arms - Google.
Someone really needs to get with the times and stop sensationalizing. IE 6? Are you really leveling criticism at a browser of two versions and *eight years* ago as if it were still relevant to today's design decisions? (Initial release date of IE6 was in 2001 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_6) The only thing that demonstrates is that MS has to be especially careful with Internet Explorer, as it tends to linger for years after it's deployed. (Hence the longer development cycles as compared to other browsers.) I wonder how well Firefox 1.0 would stack up against today's browsers? So, moving on to IE 8. IE 8 passes the Acid 2 test. (Acid 3 wasn't finalized until just before IE 8 was released, so it's not really fair to judge it on that until IE 9 comes along. Given the shortening release cycles - e.g. from IE 7 to IE 8 - that probably won't be very long.) The abusive nature of the Acid tests doesn't prove a terribly good indicator of real-world performance rendering pages. The truth is that all modern browsers now render 99.9% (or higher) of all web content correctly, and now they're competing at the fringes in this category. As for integration, yes it was integrated at the time. However, IE 8 is removable from Windows 7, it's no longer completely integrated. (That's only partly related to the EU, MS is trying to gradually compartmentalize Windows to reduce development headaches.) Further, with cloud computing now all the rage, it's actually *not* wrong to say that web functionality isn't part of an OS. Even help pages are now designed in HTML. With a separation to allow removal and reduce interrelation exploits, this argument crumbles. Besides, how did you expect people to get an alternate browser on there in the first place without a way to visit the download page? Like it or not, people would be screaming at Microsoft if Windows didn't come with that functionality out of the box. So deal with it. Declining market share: You need to look at the broader picture. Notice that hump in the middle? *Before* the big 11% decline? 11% is a relatively normal fluctuation in market share for IE. It's basically back to where it was a year ago, so this story isn't even a story. All of that, and yet you *still* missed the biggest advantage Firefox and Chrome have over IE: Extensibility. I use Firefox, not because it has any real core feature set above IE, but because of the amazingly flexible extensibility. As people come to expect more from the web, this is where the competition really lies. (At least for now.) This is the primary battleground, and Firefox and Chrome have the upper hand. That said, they will never completely erode IE's market share, because a very large number of internet users *do not need* more than standards compliance. If it checks Gmail and lets them buy stuff at Amazon or JCPenny (just examples), it does everything they need. Bookmarks is the most advanced feature this segment will ever use, and every browser is more than enough to suit them. Give them Firefox or Chrome, and they'll never even install an extension unless someone tells them to (and directs them to do so). And for this role - that of the default, basic browser - IE is a good choice.
@Aurrin- than IE (8 or 7 or 6) Chrome is a better browser for casual surfers. My browser usage pattern would be like this: Chrome : for general surfing - mails, blogs, etc. Firefox: Development related work IE : Only for testing the compatibility in the webpages. I know this is not the usage pattern for a larger public, but I would suggest Chrome for casual surfers just for its speed and simplicity. P.S: About 6 months ago, my mother replaced IE with FF as her primary browser - all by herself. I dont know if that makes her eligible to remove the label 'general public' from her.
Yup, techies are the people who had always hated IE. In fact, I met Fx for the first time back in 2003/4, when I was googling for a better web browser (other than Opera, of course). Since then, I had stuck to Fx for my first-choice. When I see someone using IE, I seriously wonder how ignorant people can be about their own freedom to choose a better web experience. It's them who suffer, why can't they think?
Nice Post! and IE6 still gets a lot of people roused one way or the other. The Firefox plug in ecosystem was a significant killer, than just Firefox alone. It made it far more feature rich than just being better because of tabs.
Just came across this post and it reminded me of some research I did about 9 months ago regarding detecting browser and implementing css fixes for IE. I work in PHP and tried many different detects and nothing seemed to work. On a whim I tested a detect in Javascript and what came up totally surprised me. I urge everyone here to run tests on their own because what gets sent to the server from MS Windows is totally erroneous. I haven't had time to set up a statistics program using both JS and PHP to test and determine what the difference is but my guess is that IE market share is significantly lower - maybe about 1/2 of what is being reported. Read my article: http://geek-zone.yourwebreference.com/2009/02/12/Web_Browser_Statistics_Are_Lies_Microsoft_Fraudulently_Alters_Information
You are making couple of good points but, in my opinion, you are missing the main point here -- the fact that integration of IE and Windows went already beyond a "best industrial practice" logic. At this stage, Microsoft, being aware of a lowering of their browser market share, is forced to use a Trojan-horse approach to standards (such as CSS2.1 or Javascript) in IE8 while intending, at the same time, to sneak in some proprietary content of hooks (in a near-virus manner) to OS-level dependencies, in effect creating an ingenious symbiotic OS/browser system. Case and point, recently I tried for several days to "twist and bend" JavaScript/jQuery to make the IE6/IE7/IE8 bunch happy. Practically that a near-impossible mission mainly due to the fact that Microsoft purposely keeps their IE a moving target. All that while I had absolutely no problems in using JavaScript/jQuery to create content that all ten non-IE browsers, I tried, had absolutely no problem with. Why, you may ask, Microsoft is so reluctant in making things easy. The answer is obvious by now. Microsoft, for a business reason (read "American greed"), is not interested in separating Windows from the IE. Windows alone without IE is useless to a modern computer/mobile user and, alternatively, IE without Windows is useless to Microsoft because people are not willing to pay for what is an overpriced OS subscription.
(posts) (comments)
Post Comment