JavaScript Performance

Today's presentation of IE9 was refreshing, as Sinofsky noted that IE8's JavaScript performance was clearly slower than that of its competitors. The current build of IE9, however, has already closed this gap significantly and the difference in performance compared to the latest builds of Chrome and Firefox were only minor. As Microsoft notes, given how fast modern JavaScript engines have become over the last year, improvements in the JavaScript engine don't influence real-world performance at this point and other browser sub-systems become the bottlenecks that impede improvements.

Hardware Acceleration and Font Smoothing

Microsoft also plans to make use of DirectX-based hardware accelerated graphics and text in IE9. In his demo, Sinofsky showed that Bing maps can render about 14 frames per second in IE8. With hardware acceleration in IE9 turned on, he got 60 frames per second. In addition, this technology will also increase font quality and readability in IE9.

Videos

Microsoft already published a number of videos with the engineers working on IE9 on Channel 9 (sorry, these are Silverlight only).

It's an awfully charming video by one of the greatest musicians of all time. This 63-year old mega-millionaire is downright folksy when talking about web browsers.

Hey Dolly, if you like IE8 - you should let Google's Chrome sweep you off your feet! Not a lot of features, but it's super fast for a fast-thinking woman like you. Is it customization you're looking for? We know you've seen a whole lot of things all around the world - but have you seen Firefox yet?

Dolly Parton? How are you going to top that, Mozilla?

Thanks to James Governor for finding the above video.

"Some folks at Google," as the project team is quaintly described on Google's new What Browser site, were charged with explaining what a browser is and what choices consumers have. They got halfway there; but as far as helping consumers make informed choices, information is still limited to pretty colors and shiny logos.

The cornerstone of the site is this average user-friendly animated video explaining in painfully simple terms what a web browser does. It's not an OS, and it's not a search engine. It was simple enough that my 8-year-old niece didn't have too much of a problem with the post-video comprehension check I gave her.

The site gives equally simple text tutorials on how to change a homepage, a default search engine, and a default browser. Credit must go to the "folks" at Google for making these parts of the site accessible to the average Internet user, something that is difficult for a justifiably biased technology company to do.

Talk Nerdy to Me

The "Under the Hood" section of the site seemed like it might give the geekier among us some food for thought with regard to browser performance. It contained this history lesson of a browser timeline from Wikipedia and a series of diagnostic tests, mostly related to browsers' processing of JavaScript.

We ran the Google-developed V8 Benchmark Suite on four major browsers. It broke Internet Explorer, and returned seemingly arbitrary results of 164, 673, and 1794 for Firefox, Safari, and Chrome, respectively, on a scale of "bigger is better." We ran the WebKit SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark on all four browsers, as well. You can click through to see our results for Chrome, IE, Safari, and Firefox.

Google's Still Got Some 'Splainin' To Do

We also opened the site with Epiphany, and WhatBrowser said it was Firefox 3. When we tried it out on Konqueror, well...

What browser? indeed. We're still waiting to see what result the Google site will return.

Which brings us to our final and most serious criticism. The site features the logos of the five major web browsers: Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Opera. No mention is made of the many other available options nor of their current existence.

The reason we feel these browsers should have been in some way included in Google's browser icebreaker is the same reason we feel there should have been at least some discussion of each browser's corporate affiliations, best uses, and technical capabilities: Out of fairness to the aforementioned casual Internet user who, after looking at this page, might know what his browser is but still won't have a clear idea of whether or why he should consider using other browsers.

I'm primarily a Chrome user, and I love the lightweight interface and speed. But it's not the most reliable for enterprise web-based software such as WebEx and certain other web applications. When I'm testing web apps for work, I very often have to break out one of my standby browsers.

The flip side of that coin is that, since IE is still a dominant figure in the territory, most apps and sites will still perform well enough in Internet Explorer. I can think of just one app I've tested this year that didn't have any IE support.

Some users will care whether or not their browser is open-sourced, or whether or not it's standards-compliant. Some will care much more that it's reliable for using enterprise web-based software. But the glaring absence of this information from Google's presentation shows us that, in the effort to avoid obvious accusations of favoritism, they've neglected a great opportunity to create an informed consumer culture around web browsers.

By presenting just the logos of five browsers, Google has done something to make consumers slightly more aware of their options but nothing to break down the rhetoric- and sentiment-driven attitudes of average users toward technology products.

So, let's have a little conversation about that now: What's your browser of choice, and why? When did you start thinking critically about your browser? What performance or other issues trouble you most? Let us know in the comments.

As Google's Mike Smith and Alex Russell told us when we talked to them about this project, a lot of companies have good reasons why they can't just simply switch away from Internet Explorer. After all, these enterprises often have made large investments in an infrastructure that is only compatible with IE. As Google pointed out to us, though, this shouldn't hold back developers who want to explore the possibilities that newer, faster and more modern browsers like Chrome can offer.

Google, which has lately developed a tendency to route around other vendors, developed this plugin without help from Microsoft, but Smith and Russell noted that Microsoft gives developers a lot of ways to easily extend Internet Explorer.

Focus on Developers

Thanks to this plugin, developers will now be able to give these users an option to at least switch to a faster rendering engine by just adding one single line of code to their sites ().

Indeed, this current release is mostly meant to give developers a choice for how they want to deliver their web apps to their users. At least for now, users won't be able to make the switch to the Chrome engine persistent, though they can invoke the plugin by putting 'cf:' in front of any URL.

Google is obviously interested in getting its web apps into businesses. These web apps tend to work best in a modern browser with a fast JavaScript engine and that is not something Internet Explorer is known for. As Mike Smith told us, the Web shouldn't be hobbled by this.

As for the user experience, the Google team tells us that the switch will be absolutely seamless and that the plugin will offer the same speed and reliability of Chrome inside IE.

A Trojan Horse?

Google hopes that this plugin will enable developers in enterprises to write code for a modern browser that isn't held back by some of the old paradigms. That, of course, is a noble undertaking. At the same time, though, we can't help but wonder if Google also plans to use this plugin to plant a Trojan horse inside these companies. After all, very few businesses are ready to make the switch from IE to Chrome right now, but Chrome Frame now offers companies the option to get the best of both worlds and - maybe - switch over to Chrome completely in the long run.

As for Google itself, the company plans to use Chrome Frame to make Google Wave run smoothly in Internet Explorer but hasn't announced any other plans to use Chrome Frame in other products yet.

The creators of Firefox had the sense to realize that their uphill battle against Microsoft's IE was not going to be fought between equal armies. Internet Explorer was already pre-installed on almost every PC, and the Redmond company had ten times the resources to spend on development and research than their open-source competitor. Spread Firefox began as an effort to harness the collective voices of the programmers, marketers and enthusiasts contributing to the Mozilla project. Rather than positioning themselves as a corporate competitor, Firefox likened itself to a political cause. Externally, the group referred to itself as a "movement", and internally, the very infrastructure of the community site was powered by CivicSpace (formerly DeanSpace). The site is a modified version of the Drupal content management system created for Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign.

Spread Firefox became a rallying hub for open-source advocates and Microsoft dissenters. Since the very beginning, Firefox was humanized as the eager young candidate with a can-do attitude, while Microsoft's IE was portrayed as being bloated, corrupt and resting on his laurels.

In this world, the initial political platforms had nothing to do with health care or fiscal responsibility, but rather the impending threats of spyware and Trojan horses. Instead of putting signs on their lawns, volunteers put "Get Firefox" buttons on their personal websites. Instead of holding bake sales, they held hack-a-thons to build new extensions.

It's not unreasonable to compare the browser's fans to Howard Dean's leaflet-touting Deaniacs. While most enthusiasts opt to don t-shirts or work on web development, there are certainly zealots. One group of hardcore Oregon State University fans went so far as to create a 220 ft. Firefox crop circle.

Both Dean's campaign strategies and Spread Firefox are testament to small contributions and the power of the internet. The race to 1 billion downloads is a huge step in the browser territory struggle; however, as with Dean's campaign, it's still a long way from single-handedly toppling the status quo. Nevertheless, the Firefox campaign may be aided by Microsoft's antitrust case and the company's recent proposal to include rival web browsers in the Windows OS throughout Europe.

Mozilla's bid to become commander in chief, at least in Europe, may actually be achieved in the foreseeable future. It will be interesting to see if Opera, Safari and Chrome will step in to split the vote.

For more information on Firefox, visit the Spread Firefox site, or to download the browser, visit the product page.

Featuring one-time Lois and Clark actor Dean Cain, the ads are uncharacteristically hip and discuss such real-world Internet problems as the fear of missing something (a.k.a. insomnia by social media) and the fear of your S.O. finding your porn cache. However, at least one of the videos was just too cool for Microsoft. After becoming strangely popular and talked-about online, the video was renounced by the software mega-company and pulled from the promotional website. Somewhere tonight, a creative director weeps.

The spot itself features a young lady spewing copious amounts of what used to be breakfast on a young man. She'd borrowed his laptop and evidently stumbled upon some hideous new Rule 34 form of online entertainment. The ad serves to highlight IE8's sneaky no-history InPrivate browsing feature.

The ads are, as a group, delightfully off-brand. They're too cool for Microsoft, which has generally dwelt somewhere between stodgy and cutesy in terms of marketing.

Better still, they show that Microsoft just might be listening to what users really need: Web Slices to get quick views of personally important sites without wasting unnecessary time browsing between full-on tabs; sharing accelerators for sending along lolcats or other media with a single right-click; and yes, a way to keep the missus from finding out about your love affair with Suicide Girls.

The features are nifty in themselves. We'd totally use them if we weren't already committed to Chrome and Firefox.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Version Market Share

The fact that as of today almost 23% of all Internet surfers are still using IE6, however, leads us to believe that it will take a while before a larger number of IE7 and IE6 users will switch to IE8. While it's a major update, IE8 does not include a lot of new 'must-have' features for most users who just use their browser to get around on the net, and who probably don't care much about accelerators and web slices.

We described most of IE8's new features in previous posts about the beta and release candidates, so here is just a short reminder of some of the most interesting new additions to IE8:

• Accelerators (think addons that make things like mapping addresses or initiating a blog post easier)
• Web Slices (make information from sites available directly in your bookmarks)
• InPrivate browsing (similar to the 'incognito' mode in Chrome or the 'private browsing' feature in Safari 4)
• Built-in clickjacking prevention
• Built-in phishing prevention
• Crash recovery (similar to Chrome; when a tab crashes, it won't take down the whole browser and the content is automatically restored and reloaded)

Speed and Security

Of course, Microsoft has also stepped up its efforts to keep users secure (pdf), and IE8 also feels a lot faster than Microsoft's earlier browsers. Microsoft famously argued that its browser has been optimized to render the most popular pages on the Internet faster than any other browser, and that JavaScript performance, which is what all the other browser developers are focused on right now, is only a small part of the puzzle. To us, however, IE8 still didn't feel very fast, especially when compared to Google's Chrome.

Best New Features: Accelerators and Web Slices

In our opinion, the two features that stand out in the new version of IE8 (besides the obvious, like speed and better security) are accelerators and web slices. One web slice we especially liked was the OneRiot slice, which gives you a quick overview of the most popular videos on the Internet right now.

In its press release, though, Microsoft argues that performing simple tasks like mapping an address takes 7 steps in Firefox, but only 3 in IE8. Of course, that is only true if you don't install the Map This addon for Firefox. And that, of course, is a large part of Microsoft's problem. Thanks to the large number of Firefox addons and other tools like Greasemonkey, you can easily replicate most of the new features from IE8 in Firefox.

Verdict

Overall, IE8 is not a bad browser, and most mainstream users who are still using IE7 will feel right at home. The problem for Microsoft, however, is that a lot of users have already moved to other browsers like Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome, and IE8 doesn't really offer these users anything new or innovative. Of course, IE7 is the world's most often used browser, so this upgrade, as Om Malik rightly points out, will indeed be a welcome upgrade for millions of Windows users, and might just stop a lot of them from looking for alternatives in the near term. If you are already using another browser, however, IE8 will just look like more of the same and we can't really see a compelling reason for why you would want to switch back to Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Compatibility

Older preview releases of IE8 already featured a compatibility view, but this release candidate takes a slightly different approach. Instead of having to switch to the compatibility mode yourself after something goes wrong, IE8 will do so automatically, based on a built-in list of sites that are already known to be incompatible with IE8.

While the IE8 team proudly points out that the browser aces the ACID2 test, it should be noted that it doesn't pass the ACID3 test.

Security

Maybe the most important advancement in IE8 is its built-in clickjacking prevention. Content providers can now add a tag to their pages and explicitly disallow their content from being shown in a frame.

Microsoft has also updated the InPrivate Browsing and Filtering modes.

Speed

In terms of speed, Microsoft decided not to follow the lead of the other major browsers, which are mostly focusing their energies on building faster JavaScript rendering engines. Instead, Microsoft's browser team argues that JavaScript is only responsible for 20% of the page load time on the 25 most popular sites online. So instead of speeding up the JavaScript engine, Microsoft optimized IE8 for these 25 popular pages.

Early Verdict

In our tests of the earlier betas and this release candidate, IE8 proved itself to be a perfectly capable browser, and new features like web slices and accelerators are quite useful and work surprisingly well. For mainstream users who are still using IE7 (or even IE6), IE8 is a major upgrade, but because Firefox has a far more interesting lineup of addons and extensions than IE, most advanced users probably won't even bother to install it. IE8 is definitely an important milestone in the development of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, but a lot of the 'new' features are already available for Firefox, Chrome, and Opera.

The default search engine for Inqisitor is obviously Yahoo's own product, but you can also switch to Google as your default search provider. While Flickr and Wikipedia are already built into the plugin by default, Inquisitor also allows you to add shortcuts to any other search engine to its repertoire.

Personalization

In this new version, Yahoo has also started to personalize the results based on your previous search behavior.

In our tests, the personalization seemed to work quite well, though it takes a few searches before the plugin learns enough about your behavior to become useful.

The plugin can now also analyze your bookmarks and include them in your searches. This is useful, but modern browsers like Firefox 3 and Chrome already include this functionality in their own address bars now and can display their results a bit faster than Inquisitor.

In the future, we assume that this functionality is going to become a standard browser feature, but if you are looking to enhance your search box now (and especially if you are using Internet Explorer), this plugin is definitely worth a try.

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MediaTemple provides hosting for RWW and SixApart provides our publishing software MT4.

This week, Fairtilizer has launched the first part of their new distribution platform: an embeddable player which allows indie artists to share their music anywhere on the net from web sites to blogs to social networks.

We told you about Fairitlizer over a year ago, when the company was still in private alpha. The easiest way to describe the site is to say that it combines the discovery aspects of Hype Machine with the distribution model of Tunecore. At the time of our initial writing, the company let artists upload tracks which visitors could browse through to find music they liked. Now Fairtilizer has opened its doors and is launching the next phase of their service: distribution.

Artists can now use one unified interface provided by Fairtilizer to distribute songs to blogs, web sites, social networks, and digital music stores...yes, even iTunes (The digital stores piece is coming soon, the others are available now). The distribution is aided by an embeddable player which can be added to any web site. The player comes in four different sizes and has shuffle and autoplay options as well as the ability to stream a customizable playlist. Once embedded, artists can then easily track analytics like downloads and plays per country.

The Fairtilzer Player:

Additionally, on the Fairtilizer web site itself, each track page comes with customizable URL, artwork, space for description and links (like to artist web sites, stores, and booking contacts, etc.), and a comment board for listeners. Tracks can be set to streaming only or made available for download, and soon artists will be able to mark them for sale, too, if they so desire. The tracks can also be set to public or private.

That private setting is designed to help artists in the initial phases before the launch of a new tune. Traditionally, launching a new track involves three steps: production, promotion, and distribution. With record companies today, leaks can occur in both the production and promotion phases as tracks are sent back and forth between artists, producers, DJs, journalists, and other taste makers who receive a first look before the track becomes publicly available. To combat those leaks, Fairtilizer provides these "private streams" instead. Artists will be able to send the track to specific people just as they did before, but the track will be protected from piracy and leaks.

The Future of Music

Although Fairtilizer will provide tools for artists wishing to sell their music, the focus isn't just on music sales. Instead, it focuses on providing all the tools an artist would need to get their music discovered, downloaded, shared, and distributed.

In the future, says Olivier Rosset, a former music exec and co-founder of Fairtilizer, it won't be about who owns the rights to a recording anymore. Music will instead center around the URL. And at Fairtilizer, they want to be the company that best helps an artist get that URL, that single track, onto the most sites across the internet.

Usually team collaboration tools are separated into distinct categories. You have tools for presentations like GoToMeeting, WebEx, or BudgetConferencing; you have whiteboarding applications like Twiddla's team brainstorming solution and sometimes you have combo solutions like Adobe's Connect Now which lets you whiteboard and web conference at the same time. Or there's Vyew which lets you whiteboard and screen share. Then you have your project or task management tool set which can be anything from Basecamp to Clever Tools to Google Docs or it can even be an enterprise 2.0 app like the newly launched Qtask. Finally, if you just want to share screens live, you have to turn to solutions like Yugma (review), Yuuguu (review), or DimDim.(This isn't an extensive list by any means, FYI).

There aren't many apps that combine all these functions into one. OpenACircle, however, makes a good effort at doing so. The only feature they're lacking is a dedicated whiteboarding tool, but considering the support for everything else from file sharing to screen sharing, it's not worth dismissing the app solely due to that one missing feature. Besides, they're looking into adding that in a later release, if there is enough demand.

OpenACircle Dashboard

OpenACircle's Feature Set

What OpenACircle does provide is an extensive feature set that works well for distributed teams that still need to meet up regularly and share what they're working on with each other. To accomplish this, the app provides the following features, as detailed below.

Collaborate

The core feature to OpenACircle is the concept of the circles themselves. Essentially, a circle is a virtual team collaboration space where everyone can share information and work with each other in an environment focused on one particular area of a task or project.

If you have documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, PowerPoints, or any other type of file, you can upload it to the circle. You can import contacts from your email program and you can invite other members to join the circle. From within the circle, you can quickly launch the other conferencing aspects of the program like web conferencing which is done using web cams or screen-sharing. Every action taken within a circle is meant to be fast and easy, often only one or two clicks away. In a circle, no one person is tasked with being the admin or organizer - everyone can upload files, start chats, or host a meeting.

A Live Room

Presentations and Web Conferencing

Whether you need to share your desktop for a presentation or just have an online meeting with other team members, you can accomplish this from OpenACircle. Anyone can schedule the meeting and invite members to attend. Although a dozen members can participate in a live audio or video conference at one time, OpenACircle limits you to viewing three web cams and one desktop at a time. They claim this to be an intentional design choice because "people talk in same clusters," but the reality is that the system might not be able to support a dozen live cam streams at once. That's not really a big deal for smaller teams, but those teams with more members might wish to see all the faces of the meeting attendees.

Meeting Participants

For anyone who missed the meeting, the recordings are made available for later viewing. What's interesting is that multiple recordings from each member's viewpoint are archived. This means that you could have Bob, who was watching Sue's desktop, saved in one stream and John, who was watching Bob's desktop, saved in another. That's a feature you don't see elsewhere.

Chats

While attending a meeting, you have the opportunity to chat with other members through an integrated text chatting feature. You can even privately chat ("whisper") to each other. Those public chats are later archived within the circle. They could be used for side discussions or even as real-time meeting minutes.

Conclusion

OpenACircle represents an innovative all-in-one solution for small teams. They could be teams in a traditional enterprise or SMB environment who are just looking for a better way to work together or they could also be distributed teams for whom geography is a challenge. Mobile professionals will like it too, as it allows them to attend meetings and have the benefit of team collaboration even when they're on the road alone.

Users today receive 25 circles with as many as 50 people in each circle with unlimited storage. OpenACircle.com will begin charging in January. Anyone who signs up now will receive 90 days free even if they exceed what is currently being provided for free. Pricing is $9.95 for a premium account that incorporates additional circles and additional storage. OpenACircle.com will always have a free version. A fully operable version will be free up to a certain memory limitation (1GB) and over that will be $9.95 per month per user.

You can now join the OpenACircle beta program from the company homepage.

UPDATE: In light of the comments below, it's worth noting that OpenACircle has initially launched Windows-only, but support for other platforms (like Mac) and browsers (including a mobile version) are coming in the future. More specifically, Firefox support is only 30-45 days out.

Sitemeter is a free web analytics tool for keeping track of your site's visitors. A bug found in both the javascript and HTML widget made thousands of sites using Sitemeter inaccessible earlier today including popular blogs such as PerezHilton.com, Gizmodo, Valleywag, and Problogger. When users would visit any sites using Sitemeter, they would be presented with an error message pop-up:

Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site http://www.sitename.com

Operation aborted

Pissing on its Own Reputation?

The situation brings to light a lot of concerns about the internet and dependency on web products and services. However, the biggest concern is for Sitemeter as a company and how they decided to handle the situation with silence. For one, Sitemeter has made no moves to inform their public of what's going on. For those not as tech savvy as some of us, they were probably hit the hardest due to searching for a solution to a problem that they couldn't readily identify. Bad press for Sitemeter? Any press could be good press, but there's no doubt that this story and more will rank high in Google and Yahoo searches when users are searching for reviews about Sitemeter. Is this really what they want prospective customers to see?

VC Fred Wilson asked recently on his blog if there is a business in browser add-ons? I have a vested interest, since my company is in the add-on business. Adding a bit of functionality to your browser can be fun and customization makes software more personal, yet there are issues such as privacy, performance, and the inability of mainstream consumers to manage add-ons.

The browser is a web battlefield. Microsoft will do everything in its power to keep on top of the browser game, but it's been losing ground to Mozilla's Firefox - where security and add-ons are a differentiating factor. Firefox is not only the early adopter browser, but it is also being marketed as the people's browser.

Add-ons help Mozilla foster its vibrant community. Redmond recognized this and a year ago started a major push for browser add-ons. Both major browser makers now focus on add-ons and this support offers the opportunity for startups to reach millions.

Can this result in a business built around add-ons? In this post we take a detailed look.

Browser as a Platform

Every major browser offers a plug-ins infrastructure. Mozilla and Opera made add-ons fundamental to their strategy, while Microsoft has recently started to focus on add-ons. These are the reasons why it's important for the browsers to support this:

1. Keep the core browser light to avoid feature creep.
2. Foster a community of innovators and entrepreneurs, helping to evolve and define the next generation browsing experience.
3. Enable users to customize and personalize the browser.

There's another major driving force: webification of the desktop. Some 2 years ago one of my first articles discussed the convergence of the desktop and the web. Desktop applications have become more web-aware and in a sense every app is now a web app. Why not make such applications browser based?

Browser add-ons are easier to deliver than desktop applications. Every major browser player becomes a sought-after distribution point. The Browser War also becomes the Desktop War.

Users: It's all about utility

Browser makers know what's at stake. Modern users seek convenience and utility; they're looking for contextual software that helps them get things done. And they don't want to pay for it.

Because the add-ons are compact and update mostly automatically for consumers, they feel very different compared to heavy desktop apps, where people had to manage large chunks of software on Windows machines. These days users do one-click installs of the recommended, popular and new-add ons from the gallery. The experience is the same regardless of your operating system and the add-ons update automatically. In a way it's what Sun has been doing with Java, except there is no virtual machine to download. The Browser is the Virtual Machine.

Businesses: It's all about numbers

In evaluating business opportunity, we need to consider scale and monetization. Popular Firefox add-ons enjoy tens and some even hundreds of thousands of downloads a week. Firefox itself had a record number of downloads recently and it's pushing add-on downloads along with it. Since Microsoft has been focused on add-ons lately as well, popular add-ons are getting great exposure via the IE community as well. Browsers have opened a massive distribution channel for application delivery and companies are starting to leverage it.

Not all add-ons will do well. The power law argument applies. A relatively small number of add-ons will dominate, and most will have just a few hundred users.

What is the shape of this power law curve? Just how many add-ons can be successful businesses? And how many add-ons can one user have? It's difficult to imagine more than 10 per user.

Only great add-ons will stay permanently and will have a chance of being a business. The same is true about every online/software business: iPhone apps, Facebook apps, web services and desktop applications.

The add-ons of today have a much clearer shot at the user base compared to the desktop applications of the 90s. Everybody uses a browser so the target market is massive.

How will add-ons be monetized?

Assuming that an add-on gains users and becomes popular, how will it be monetized? Four ways come to mind: Charge the users; sell advertising; use an affiliate model; be a data/service provider.

Charging users is not really an option. We've written about the danger of free, but this is just the state of today's market, where consumers don't pay for software. It would be difficult to fathom the model where consumers would willingly pay for premium features. Flickr manages to do that and 37signals has managed to build a business around paid premium services, but these are exceptions.

Advertising is the de facto choice to make money on the web, but for add-ons this is not a natural. Users are okay with banner and link ads in pages, but if browsers start to advertise on top, that could irritate. An advertising model would need to be delivered in a way that fits the functionality of the add-on.

An affiliate model seems more feasible. Many add-ons focus on enhancing shopping; having smart contextual product experience wired into the browser makes consumers happy. This model is fine for add-ons that focus on books, music, movies, travel, and other verticals. The affiliate game is all about scale, and being part of the browser gives the businesses presence around the web.

The last model is essentially a data play. As users browse the web, they reveal their preferences and habits. Individual, group and aggregate information about user's attention can fuel services, from personalized alerts and improved search to web-wide popularity and recommendation engines. The issue here is privacy; sites and ISP providers track people, but people hate being tracked.

In order for the data businesses to thrive, they need to have a clear stand on information ownership. One strategy is to make personal information completely private: i.e., put the user in control. The aggregate and group information can still be used for business purposes, but not traceable back to individuals. There is opportunity to enable users to leverage personal information on their terms. Add-ons can enable pipe businesses that faciliate connection between the users and other web services.

All these opportunities are not well understood today, since the promise of the Attention Economy has never really been fulfilled.

Conclusion

Browser add-ons are increasingly interesting ways to reach consumers. Since the browser is the most used application on the desktop and major browsers are platforms, businesses are looking for opportunities to reach consumers through this new channel. Better than desktop applications, browser add-ons are light and update automatically.

As with any vertical business, only a few add-ons can become real businesses. The competition is tough and the business models have not been mapped out that well. Yet if there's a shot at reaching users via a download, browser add-ons seem to be it.

What is the future of browser add-ons? Do you think business will be built around them? What business models will we be seeing around add-ons?