Lessons from the Browser Wars 212
An anonymous reader writes to mention a piece on the Harvard Business School site talking about Lessons from the Browser Wars; specifically, what can be learned about first-mover advantages and the upsurge in Firefox use? From the article: "As a tool for exploring how standards are set when new technologies hit the market, the browser wars exhibit many features we like to study: competition between two viable alternatives, rapidly improving technologies, the ability of firms to use strategic levers such as market power and channels of distribution, growth in demand leading to diffusion of the new technology through the population, and uncertainty. Thus, this is one example from which we can generalize lessons regarding the outcome of diffusion of innovation into a market."
Re:rapidly improving technologies? eh (Score:1, Interesting)
But to give credit where due, I thought it was smart on their part to change the id to match netscape (mozilla). When IE was in beta, everybody was building sites to more or less block it (the same way that IIS sites now do to firefox, safari, and konqi). That was genius copying in a place that most would want the differentiation.
Not a troll, a real question (Score:3, Interesting)
click here for jpeg explanation. [putfile.com]
Is this because IE renders the page incorrectly? Firefox is on the left, IE is on the right. The only font settings I've changed has been increasing point size via the mouse wheel (on both browsers) 3-4 clicks. I would hate to have to change my display resolution just to make it look right (using a 19" CRT with 1280x1024).
IMO, IE just looks better to me, comparitively speaking. The way the font(s) are being displayed in FF makes for a terrible browsing experience to me - large text is extremely, overly large, while regular text is small & almost unreadable on my 1280x1024 screen (see screenshot).
Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated, I figured you slashgeeks could help me, cause I'm stumped. No, this isn't a troll, it's a legitimate question. I'd love to be able to use Firefox, but I'd want the text to be displayed *exactly the same* as it is in IE, and it would be amazing.
What's the payoff? (Score:4, Interesting)
I figure that MS must be losing out cash wise in the short term. I can't see advertising revenues from their home page being too much in excess of their development costs and I would figure that advertisers would be very weary of taking their site stats for granted. Just because they have millions visiting one of their sites doesn't mean the visitors actually pay any attention to what's on there as I imagine most arrive there because they simply don't know how to set their home page and immediately move on to another site.
Having the number 1 browser has also hit their brand extremely hard, all of the security holes associated with IE taint their brand image across the board. Sure, windows would still be known for its security issues if IE had never been around but I feel that IE's security problems has seriously compounded the bad image factor. Unless Microsoft is making serious money from IE, or knows they will in the future, I reckon they'd be better of dumping it and leaving the job to Firefox and Opera etc. Is it really that valuable to them that when a computer gets a virus/hacked the finger is often pointed at IE and Microsoft on the whole?
This Applies More Widely (Score:2, Interesting)
"What is interesting are the lessons we can learn about how a fast [insurgency] can upset the normally strong barriers to entry that a [new regime's] advantage in a [country] can create. In short, the big lesson learned is that a window of opportunity exists for a [insurgency] to challenge a [new regime] in this setting early on when [democracy] has not yet diffused through the entire population - the [insurgency] can try to influence new users rather than get the small [democratic] base to switch over.
The [insurgency] has to have some sort of asymmetric advantage, such as [suicide bombings], in order to slow the build-up of network effects around the first mover and ensure that the [insurgency]'s product begins to build up a critical mass."
BTW this edited version could be illegal here (plan for a terrorist attack) [politics.co.uk], but f**k it, IANAT.
Re:Just be better (Score:3, Interesting)
Innovation and hubris (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that the article didn't sound all analysis-y and everything, but I think they missed the really important stuff.
I think Netscape ultimately died partly of self-inflicted wounds, and was partly the victim of Microsoft's monopoly abuse.
Clayton M. Christensen (ironically also of Harvard) foresaw the former about a decade ago in The Innovator's Dilemma. The demand curve for browsers is shallower than the supply curve because once the browser implements the standards, there is only so much more room for it to add value. Pretty soon it ends up oversupplying features that are less and less important to fewer and fewer people; the formerly underpowered latecomer catches up -- not with the other product (it arguably never will), but with the market's demand. No matter what the first-mover does at that point, it's just more oversupply. The latecomer stumbles onto some attribute that nobody originally thought was important (integration into the OS?) which the first-mover cannot match, and suddenly the first-mover's former advantage turns into a detriment.
Near its zenith, Netscape's best possible outcome was probably to license its browser to Microsoft, let it remain the standard, and get the advantage of Microsoft's OS monopoly. However, Microsoft's hubris, abetted by Netscape's constant attacks, precluded any possibility of cooperation. Netscape's best remaining alternative was probably to ignore Microsoft completely, resist the temptation to rewrite (which also killed competitors to Word), and use their resources to keep innovating in other ways. I think Christensen would have suggested that Netscape spin off as many new ideas a possible, and for the core company to concentrate on maintaining its core product.
Sadly, this pattern repeats over and over. I hope Java doesn't become the next high-profile victim.
Re:Lesson for what? (Score:3, Interesting)
Big Fat Lie (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Netscape dropped the ball (Score:3, Interesting)
When Netscape gave away the easiest-to-use web editor at the time we had years of Netscape-only sites; when they stopped and Micro$oft started bundling a free web editor with home installations of Windows we had years of IE only sites. See the connection...?
A significant chunk of that effort (Score:5, Interesting)
...was compliments of Tantek Çelik [tantek.com], standards evangelist, and main designer of the Tasman rendering engine which drove IE for Mac. In digging for his history with the project, I note a few things:
- Daring Fireball's [daringfireball.net] archived recap of the history of IE for Mac leading up to its cancellation,
- A blog entry describing [isolani.co.uk] how after Tantek was finished with IE for Mac, Microsoft moved him over to
...WebTV (?!),
- An entry on the IE Blog [msdn.com] where it looks like Microsoft is advertising for various open positions, and many people are responding with mixed emotions.
I also considered throwing in a link to Tantek's Box Model Hack [tantek.com] (well! I guess I did after all!).As for TFA... gah. Don't get me started on TFA. It doesn't mention IE for Mac at all (perhaps the Publications Coordinator who wrote TFA never heard of it?) and makes some innocent and half-assed assumptions about Web Standards [webstandards.org]—mostly their lack of existence.
And the marginalization of other browsers? Her argument basically runs that other browsers don't stand a chance against IE's installed base, while conveniently overlooking the fact that IE itself was once an "other" browser and citing ways that IE got the leg-up on Netscape without ever noting that those other browsers are doing the same things to IE. The argument basically runs "Yes, things changed in the past, but things will remain as they are now because they're the way they are now." Buh?
Re:Innovation and hubris (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:rapidly improving technologies? eh (Score:1, Interesting)
Netscape 4.x... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:rapidly improving technologies? eh (Score:3, Interesting)
What does 'technical' mean in this context? The browser window in which I type is one of 7 tabs open in Seamonkey right now, doing the same in IE would feel like riding the browser short bus. Cookie management per site is one pull-down away and encompasses every potential option. I haven't used IE since Mozilla first compiled and feel hamstrung whenever forced to go back. IE's development is focused on the need of business users to cram 'content' down your throat, Microsoft follows Firefox's user enhancements late and grudgingly, more for the sake of appearance than desire to serve the (non-corporate) customer.
IE for banking (Score:2, Interesting)
Or more realistically, an FF extension to change the User-agent string. My bank (Föreningssparbanken) used to lock me out before, but with an extension that was quickly fixed. Then they had a period of putting up a warning instead ("We can not guarantee the security of ..." -- yeah right..) but now it's no problem. They even keep track of new versions and tell users they might want to upgrade, at least for Opera.