Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus.
We wrote
recently about
the renewed web browser war between Microsoft and Mozilla (and some other, smaller,
usually very innovative players). Our theory is that in 2006 a lot of the ground work for
a major battle was laid out. Microsoft launched a
significant upgrade to Internet Explorer for the first time in about 5 years (IE7), while
the Firefox team spent time polishing up their
open source browser. But it is the latest developments which make it clear that Firefox
thinks it's showtime. The first development was the Firefox ad
on Google's home page. The second one was the annoucement
that Firefox is going to advertise on television (curiously our post on this didn't seem
to get much reaction, but we thought it was big news). So in terms of the browser wars
Part II, the coding part is done and it is now all about the marketing.
Looking at it with an eye on history, we could say this war is about old wounds. Remember a decade ago when Netscape went down in flames? Well it's not the original Netscape team, but its spirit (in the form of Firefox) is coming back to haunt Redmond. But the times have changed and so has everything else. Firefox is open source, slick and marketing-savvy. It knows its ways around the new web far better than the dominant Internet Explorer. It might not have the marketshare, but it certainly has the mindshare.
But that is perhaps just sentimental talk. The fact is, this new war is not so much about old wounds. It's probably more about a multi-billion dollar advertising industry - and perhaps even more than that.
Lets take a look at the evidence. Here they are, the Internet Explorer and Firefox start pages:
Yes, that is right. It's Google vs. Microsoft. Firefox is standing on the shoulders of the number one web giant, Google, in this Browser war 2.0. Why is Google supporting Firefox? In a word - default. In two words Power Law.
When it comes to architecture, Internet Explorer 7.0 takes after its rival Firefox. Like Firefox, the new IE supports various extension points. One in particular to note here is the search extension. In principle, anyone can write it - we have seen hundreds written for Firefox. They search Amazon, del.icio.us, Yahoo! and many many other sites. But only one of them is the default one. Just like all browsers come with a default home page (again compare them in the pictures above), all browsers come with a default search box.
Microsoft's plan for grabbing Google's advertising dollars relies simply on the fact that people do not bother changing the default. When it comes to this sort of thing, people behave like most things in nature. They follow the Power Law. This means that exponentially many more people will not change the default. And exponentially many times current IE install base times pay per click equals billions of dollars. So here now we see the good old Microsoft that we have grown up to both admire and hate.
To recap, Microsoft's simple plan is this:
Some of you may think we are being too cynical - surely it can't be true? Of course this is true. This is business, with billions of dollars at stake. At the other end of the spectrum, things are looking very serious too. Google has always been religious about its home page appearance. Putting a Firefox ad on it is atypical of them - perhaps even extreme. But Google knows what is coming in Vista - and so we have to assume that this is a purposeful strategy to combat that.
In 2007, we think there is going to be a massive advertising campaign for Firefox. On the Internet, on Social Networks and on public television. The message will be that Firefox is a better, safer, faster browser. However, a lay person may not want to go the extra step to download it. So Firefox has to be viral. The actual users of the browser are going to share their enthusiasm and appreciation with others. They will do it relatively informally and no doubt from the bottom of their hearts. And since they have nothing to gain personally, it might just work.
The early days of the new Browser war is about ad clicks. But it is not likely to stop there. Microsoft has no choice but to expand the war further, because it has not been able to gain any ground on Google online. So since the online war is lost (or at least not looking promising), it makes sense for Microsoft to fight back via the browser. After all, some things never change - whoever controls the browser controls tens of millions of eyeballs.
Ironically, the innovative Semantic Web, Smart Browsing and Attention technologies that are in the spotlight for 2007 - are paving the road for Microsoft to control the browser. Once these technologies evolve, the 'sleeping' giant from Redmond will have the green light to repeat the simple plan, but deeper into the browsing experience. Now that is truly scary - and we hope this is not going to happen.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Why Browser War 2.0 Will Heat Up in 2007.
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Read/WriteWeb hat das Jahr 2007 als heiße Phase des Browserkrieges 2.0 ausgemacht. Es geht natürlich um den Kampf Firefox vs. Internet Explorer und damit auch um Google vs. Microsoft. Microsofts Plan für die Zukunft scheint so auszusehen: Die Windo... Read More
Written by Richard MacManus, Ebrahim Ezzy, Emre Sokullu, Alex Iskold and Rudy De Waele. Also John Milan wanted to contribute, but unfortunately got caught up in the Seattle storm - so best wishes to John and all our Seattle readers.... Read More
It's only mid November and I've found plenty of opinions already predicting 2007 trends for the Read More
Comments
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You see this war too narrow. There are 3 players.
No, not a third browser, but a third SE, a thrid toolbar.
Yahoo! Instant Messenger.
Many less savvy users have never heard of custom install and get together with YIM (shouldn't this be Y!IM) also the Yahoo! toolbar in both browsers.
In non-English speaking Europe and Asia MSN/Windows Live Messenger still is very popular, but in English speaking countries YIM has a quite important market share.
And what prevents Yahoo! from making their own Firefox build just, like Google did, and stick it on their home page? Was the Google deal an exclusive deal?
Posted by: franky | December 12, 2006 3:16 PMWell, since I need both browsers, when I installed IE7 I changed the default search engine to Yahoo :-)
Anyway, as far as browsers do, IMHO there really is one way for MS to recover market share (keeping the one it has is not that hard): to make a significantly better browser. How easy is that! :-)
Posted by: RBA | December 12, 2006 3:21 PMFranky,
I doubt that Google deal is exclusive, its beneficial to Google. Not sure if the chat client falls into the same category, but the opportunity is there from the userbase point of view.
RBA,
Yeah, this has been aparently the case since the stone age.
Alex
Posted by: Alex Iskold | December 12, 2006 5:03 PMIt will be interesting to see what happens, it definetly is a big cash cow. I think one thing that has changed from the old days is that people are more technically literate. More people are aware that there are alternatives to IE than there were in the past.
Posted by: David Mackey | December 12, 2006 5:05 PMGoogle has always been in Firefox's corner. Note that there are plenty of Microsoft engineers who prefer Firefox to IE and Google to MSN search. And the most popular platform for Firefox users is Windows. So it's worth remembering that this "war" is not a zero-sum game, and the "sides" are somewhat poorly defined. And yes, Yahoo is a serious player, Apple no doubt has plans for Safari, and Opera is angling to be a serious player in the mobile internet browser space. From the user's perspective it's all good. From the webmaster's perspective, it's rather painful...
Posted by: Seth Wagoner | December 12, 2006 6:36 PMSure,MSN/Windows Live Messenger is very very popular in Asia,but YIM is lamentable.
Because the roguish soft,Asia have more and more person start to use other browser now,like firefox~
Posted by: Bob Xu | December 12, 2006 7:35 PMLook, no one wants a browser war!
Do you remember what that was like?! It totally sucked and resulted in IE becoming the only browser the majority of people *knew about*. They didn't just use it - it's all they knew existed! Even now, IE v6 has huge marketshare - a result of the flippin "browser war". Browser wars are baaaaaaddd.
Awareness, on the other hand is good. So are choices. No one wants a stupid browser war - they just want something that allows them to leverage the internet. Currently, the only way to attract people is by having some sexy options. Firefox, Flock, Safari, Opera, and Camino are all out there and all have some sweet sexy. IE7... it probably does too, but who wants to be kicked around again?
Posted by: Chris | December 12, 2006 8:46 PMGoogle and Firefox teaming up is a dangerous combination for Microsoft to overcome because I think that they are doing a great job of marketing to and keeping the developer community active. It shows in the quality of the browser. Firefox 2.0 is faster, is simpler to use and has more support for widgets and extensions than Microsoft. I think that this gives them another platform to leverage options to place adds on the browser. The real money in the game is in the ads, not the browser.
Posted by: Robert Tatum | December 12, 2006 8:57 PMI am all for both the browsers as I prefer to use both.
However, this time the war is more about controlling the search box, Google and MS would obviously want people to search their search engines and drive more advertising dollars home. Clearly this time in the browser wars its gonna be Google v/s Microsoft.
Posted by: Abhishek Sharma | December 13, 2006 3:58 AMFirefox is gaining massive usage in Europe according to a new survey.
Posted by: Stephane | December 13, 2006 8:55 AM1 out of 5 users in France browse on Firefox.
Check out..
http://www.ie7.com
Hilarious!!!
Posted by: Parag Mathur | December 13, 2006 9:08 AMSeth: It needn't be a zero-sum game, but MS always makes it a zero-sum game. For them, it is not enough to win; others must be destroyed.
They will continue to use all their standard techniques (embrace, extend, extinguish and leveraging the OS monopoly) to win. They can't commit to standard conformance, because that would make it easy to switch away from their product.
Posted by: James Jones | December 13, 2006 12:53 PMI think more and more people will continue to switch to Firefox. Everyone that I show its (now basic) features to are impressed and can't find the same options in IE.
IE 6 just can't compete and the IE 7 interface is NOT intuitive.
Posted by: Ubuntu Tutorials | December 13, 2006 12:57 PMYou forget something important, IE7 is rolling our extended validation certificates, *buzz*
Posted by: Dom | December 13, 2006 1:06 PMI doubt that this can even be called a war. This is just using buzzwords to make it sound more dangerous or something. Netscape vs. IE ended in each browser having proprietary methods or interpret the standards so that they don't work in the other browser, forcing webmasters to decide for one browser (or having to make two versions with the same content) and advertise it ("optimized for xyz 123 on 800x600" anyone?).
And now? They integrated a lot of overdue functionality and improved the standard support. Sure, it's still not as good as Opera's, Safari's or Gecko's, but they're catching up.
They're not trying to force competitors out of market, at least not in an unfair way. I think it's better to call this "competition", because that's just what it is.
Posted by: xeen | December 13, 2006 1:19 PMA good point to add is that Firefox 3 is already in development and starting to be polished. 3.0 alpha was released but days ago, and even though final is not expected towards the end of 2007, there are lots of great changes in 3.0. Furthermore, the next IE release (IE8, if they get there at all) will probably be somewhere around... 2012? Maybe?
I dunno, but one thing is for sure: Firefox is and has been on the ball for quite sometime. Microsoft just started playing catchup. 2007 the year of the Fox? 2009 The year IE lost the last of its dwindling 10% market share....?
Big things are coming...
--Jon Z | http://www.jzencovich.com
Posted by: Jon Zencovich | December 13, 2006 1:35 PMI think you're underestimating the importance of the handheld's impact on this issue. Look at BrowserCam's supported list. A year ago none of the handheld browsers were even on the list. Now it's practically it's own product between BlackBerry, Opera and IE on handhelds.
This is a multi-front protracted competition, not clash of the titans.
Posted by: John | December 13, 2006 1:50 PMThere is a failure to understand how viral marketing really works here. Those that buy into the hype in any market sector due to viral marketing are typically early adopters. Most Firefox users are already early adopters or techies. Also, I love it when corporations say, "Hey, lets try a viral marketing scheme." If you try, then it is not viral marketing - it is just plain marketing. That is the paradox, and why so many viral marketing campaigns fail. People see right through it.
The only way for any browser to snag a majority share would be to entice an incredibly diverse market share all at once by integrating into a another application or OS. Imagine eBay stating that new seller tools will be offered only as Firefox extensions, and they "strongly recommend" users download the browser. I guarantee the Firefox market share would skyrocket.
Posted by: Brian | December 13, 2006 2:12 PMAre you a Bill Gates clone ?
Posted by: Kirk Badger | December 13, 2006 3:14 PMYou compliment firefox and then go to be a Microsoft shill.
2007 will be full on confusion and it will be the year people will come to hate, hers why
first off, as far as the web browsing campaign goes, people won't really bother which browser to use, lets face it, even though IE 7 is out, not many people upgraded, most of them are still running IE 6, why? because its does the job. The same goes with Firefox, how many "average" users do you know uses firefox? I am not talking about geeks, nerds or computer lovers. I am talking about people who use Internet to check emails, post pictures of family and read news. these people count for about 70% as opposed to the remaining 30 % whom are splitted up between the other browser ( opera, firefox and safari)
The web browser is only one of the many confusion in 2007, they'll be even more confusion on the next upcoming technologies such as the war between video players ( blue-ray vs hd dvd), between HD TV ( plasma, LCD, FLAT pannel), between different flavors of vista ( there's about 6) and more
Posted by: amedjones | December 13, 2006 5:47 PMOpera?
Posted by: Ivan Minic | December 13, 2006 6:58 PMGoogle has a bob both ways...
Posted by: Nigel Parker | December 17, 2006 7:25 PMhttp://www.google.com/toolbar/ie7/
Hi Alex and Richard,
There is one you might be interested, it is named Maxthon (formerly named as MyIE). It is windows-based, and the Maxthon2 just came out. It is brilliant.
Need to mention that Maxthon is approaching 30% of Chinese browser market.
Posted by: Gang Lu | December 18, 2006 1:53 AM@ #16 .... I'd be more intrigued at the thought that MS has woken up and the IE team are now firing on all cylinders if IE7 in Vista is as good for general users as first impressions feel, and with the Windows Live add-ons and extension architecture and gadgets the platform is opening up....
There's a lot more going on in the web space (WPF/E, Apollo etc) than just to browser interface and just because Firefox is jumping from a 2.0 release straight to 3.0 doesn't mean everyone will drop their IE as default drowser... FF may go from 10 to 15% and gain some territory but unless it remains as easy and viable for mainstream sites to develop for it as IE then it's going to drop off again. Professional analysts don't have a clue at this point... and I for sure don't!
Posted by: OffBeatMammal | December 23, 2006 3:56 PMIt has began at http://browserswar.com :))
Posted by: jeff | December 28, 2006 7:43 PM