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Andreessen on the Browser Wars
Pauly writes "In this interview, Marc Andreessen dismisses the likelihood of a renewed browser war based on the release of Mozilla 1.0. He cites Microsoft's current monopolistic market share, and dares anyone to try and fight it."
This is an interesting except:
... to get better terms. They could say, 'We own Netscape, and we're willing to use Internet Explorer, but if you don't give us distribution through the Windows desktop we're going to use Netscape and we're going to double its market share overnight and cause you guys lots of problems.' There's no internal goal at AOL, or at l! east when I was there, to go get browser market share.
Andreessen: Yeah, I think so. When they originally did the acquisition, the big motivation around it was to be able to have a bargaining chip
This would have never occurred to me, but it makes so much sense...
AOL hasn't been promoting Netscape the way they could have been, and they certainly seemed to have gone out of their way NOT to switch.
Now I know why...
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With AOL 8.0 using a Gecko derivative you never know. Of course it helps IE a lot that it comes with M$'s OS. If only Apple saw the light and made Mozilla their default browser. I thought they were into Open Source?
Andreessen has a point - the browser is, in probably 95% of cases, practically invisible to the user these days. The average user doesn't care enough to start another browser war. And really, what good would a browser war do at this point? It will be impossible to de-throne MS until someone comes up with a compelling new service or feature that MS doesn't and/or can't immediately offer. I don't know if that's even possible.
But the end of his article makes the most compelling argument to abandon Internet Explorer for Mozilla - form factor! I'm proud to proclaim that I, for one, love the Mozilla form factor. It beats IE hands down - skins, tabbed browsing... and the fact that it's open source doesn't hurt my opinion of it either. It's just more friendly - and that's where you really win users. It's not how you corner a market (MS never could have done it if they were friendly), but it's how you get a cult following. Props to the Mozilla team! And don't listen to the naysayers.
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Spiral out... keep going.
Andreessen doesn't seem to see the big picture. The browser wars on Windows may be over, but he fails to realize that on Linux, they are just beginning. With more and more people "seeing the light," Netscape, Mozilla, and Konqueror will become the dominant web browsers, as MSIE is left in the dust. Perhaps if Microsoft releases an IE for Linux they can retain some market share; otherwise, we can start to say so long to an IE-centric web and hello to uniform standards.
I've tried occasional milestone builds over the years, and not liked them. I can't deal with using Netscape, it bugs me for some odd reason.
But 1.0 has honestly taken over as a browser for me. I very rarely use any other browsers anymore, and it has taken over, at least on my desktop, as my main browser.
This isn't for some pseudo-religious reason, this isn't zealotry, I just really really like it.
It's fast, which matters on the older machines I have in the house, and the "open in new tab" thing...
It's such a simple thing, tabbing browser windows instead of opening them in new windows...
...but it makes all the difference for me. I can't use a browser without it anymore, and it hooked me within 5 minutes of firing it up.
Great feature. If only it would detect installed plugins and use them automatically instead of forcing me to either set up all of my helper applications manually or re-install all of the plugins, it would be the perfect newbie experience.
I didn't expect to like it. But I do.
you describe a common issue for people with ie 5.x and NN 4.7 installed.
.... the most standards compliant browser around. let me tell you web developers would LOVE to code to a standard and not to a browser. i think mozilla (and the next gen NN) will change the way web sites are being coded. sure the old ones will have to be updated, but that happens every 3-6 months anyway. how many sites still have "best viewed with NN 4.7 or IE 4.x" on them? those browsers have been obsolete since 2k at least. (just to point out, there are many W3C standards that IE doesn't implement correctly either, but hey, we've coded around them since that has been the defacto standard for the last 2+yrs).
;). the NN releases might be more less frequent, but i tell ya, this browser is catching on, and quickly. why? the features. users like to stop the annoying pop up windows. users like tabbed browsing. users will switch in a heartbeat for a standards compliant browser that has better features. that time to market "feature" is how users will continue to receive more and more features before the competition has beta's out.
then in enters mozilla
add on top of that features and time to market. mozilla is a rapidly developing browser. it took a while to get where it is today, but lots of that has been foundation. now it's being rapidly refined and innovated. IE just can't/won't do that. it's part of the OS after all
Andreesen is wrong about a few things. MS can be combated successfully. The trick is to not play their game of proprietary software on a platform they control. No one can succeed in that territory. The trick is not to succumb to their tactics, and to stay agile and ahead of them.
This has been tried, and it failed. You're assuming that the average consumer/user out there actually CARES about technological superiority. They don't. IE is "good enough", and it already comes installed on everything known to man, including damned internet-ready refrigerators. For your AVERAGE consumer something has to be exponentially better before they will eschew it in favor of the bundled item. Netscape fought against this and look what happened to them. I'm not going to debate the legality of what MS did to Netscape because that's not the topic here, but suffice to say that I don't think there's ANYTHING Mozilla could possibly bring to the table that would reverse the current trend, unless they found a way to have it read minds and present holographic interactive representations of supermodels for your pleasure.
"Don't fight with MS on their turf/by their rules" has been tried before, and it just does not work. MS either has their turf too well covered or they change the rules (FUD, vaporware, strongarm) to destroy the competition. With but few exceptions no one has stood up to MS and won (for long). Linux is a relative exception, but only (IMHO) because there is no corporate entity behind Linux that MS can attack. Unfortunately, that very lack is what's keeping Linux from making inroads beyond the server room, at least in the minds of the executives, VP's, and Director's who sign the big checks for software purchases.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I would like to direct your attention to an answer Marc gave to a question about the MS Antitrust proceedings. For those who didn't RTFA, Loudcloud is Marc's new business...
Andreessen: Generally, Microsoft is a partner of Loudcloud, and we work really well with them at Loudcloud because we support their technology and we have a bunch of customers running on Windows. So we don't take formal positions on remedies or lawsuits.
(Bold emphasis mine)
Can you say S-E-L-L-O-U-T?
nuclear presidential echelon assassination encryption virulent strain
Whizzmo
Funny they would actually mod that up...
``Microsoft isn't going to lose their marketshare without a seriously inferior product, and at the moment, it a hell of a lot better than Netscape's offering''
I suspect you overlooked the fact that Netscape's latest offerings (labeled 6.x and 7.x) are in fact Mozilla. IMO Mozilla is a lot better than M$ Internet Exploiter. I do agree that Netscape 4.x is horrible, though, and I'm amazed that it is still the browser of choice on so many (especially commercial *NIX) systems.
``I doubt Microsoft is worried about Opera either, and Opera makes a damn fine browser.''
Opera indeed has a lot to say for it. It currently has the best standards-compliance of any browser that I am aware of, it's blazingly fast, and it runs on a number of operating systems. The reason that MicroSoft does not have to fear them is that one of two things must happen for Opera to grow bigger; either they must get distributed with some popular system (it is in fact distributed with Psion Revos, if I recall correctly, but those are not very widespread) or they must go open source, in which case they will get support from a large community currently supporting Mozilla. As things are going now, Opera will eventually be surpassed by Mozilla (except probably in speed and size, but that will leave it with only the embedded market, so it would never become big on desktop systems). I feel sorry, because I loved Opera on Windows, but on Linux it isn't quite up to the stability and feature-richness that Mozilla has.
``Why should we really care? (And no, standard compliance isn't a good reason. We have that already.)''
In fact, standards compliance is why I care, and why every webmaster _should_ care. As long as M$ (or whoever happend to be biggest) keeps not conforming to standards, webmasters have to develop multiple versions of their code, or lose a portion of their visitors. Now maybe some don't mind having to do more work in exchange for more $$, but I think it's a Bad Thing.
``In fact, why are we using the release of Mozilla to talk about Netscape?''
How about because they are one and the same? All Netscape does since they were bought by AOL is releasing versions of Mozilla under the more familiar label Netscape, with some tech support. IMHO that's a good thing, because it might get some people/companies/BOFHs/... that are afraid to get their feet wet on OSS to use a decent browser.
With the advent of Mozilla 1.0, Netscape 4.x can finally be buried, and developers can start developing against a stable ABI, making Mozilla ever greater. I've heard rumors that AOL will be using Mozilla instead of M$IE as the base for their product, and even though I don't particularly like AOL, that will generate a lot of Mozilla users, so that more people might actually consider Mozilla when writing webpages. Perhaps that will prompt M$ to make their browser compatible (especially if they can't ship it with their OS anymore), and we will all be better off.
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Depart not from the path which fate has assigned you.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
We need to make sure people have the link to Mozilla as their signature. It should be part of their e-mail too.
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This has been tried, and it failed. You're assuming that the average consumer/user out there actually CARES about technological superiority. They don't. IE is "good enough", and it already comes installed on everything known to man, including damned internet-ready refrigerators. For your AVERAGE consumer something has to be exponentially better before they will eschew it in favor of the bundled item. Netscape fought against this and look what happened to them. I'm not going to debate the legality of what MS did to Netscape because that's not the topic here, but suffice to say that I don't think there's ANYTHING Mozilla could possibly bring to the table that would reverse the current trend, unless they found a way to have it read minds and present holographic interactive representations of supermodels for your pleasure.
While I see where you are coming from, I have to disagree. Look at Quicken, for instance. Microsoft fought that piece of software with MS Money for quite a long time, tooth & nail on several occasions. And on certain fronts, MS Money was as good as Quicken. However, Quicken still maintains almost 80% of the home finance market. Despite MS's attempts at bundling MS Money with MS Works, despite their discounts on it with purchases of MS office. Quicken does one thing, and it does it extremely well, and consumers know that. They really do care if it Quicken or not.
By that same token, I think consumers will really care about their browsers. I honestly think that IE won a lot of the market share because NS4 and especially NS6 were slow & buggy. (Of course, having the browser built inot the OS helps too). MS did have the better product, but they don't anymore. If AOL goes to a Netscape browser, and the consumers find the new features, the tabbed browsing, etc., I think there is a good chance of them not wanting to go back to IE. I was just speaking to a friend of mine who uses AOL earlier tonight, and she, albeit a textbook case of an AOL user, was asking me about other browsers because she had heard about some recent security holes in IE (e.g. Gopher hole).
There is a movement growing out there, and believe it not, AOL could be the best chance we geeks have to get an Open-Source browser back into the market.
That's not a problem, it's the solution. The next computer they get has Red Hat on it with KDE desktio default. As long as they can read their old work, surf, email and isntant message, they will be as happy as they ever were. As Andersen pointed out, the biggest factor is what browser comes with the computer.
The problem comes when you have people who have spent way too much time with Word docs and other little endless mazes M$ makes. Their work will be next to impossible to get out of their current computer, even into the latest and greatest M$ cruft. These people also resent it when all of their little shortcuts and lefthand clicks are replaced and they have to learn something different. These people can be helpful once they've lived through one or two M$ upgrades with all the loss of work. They learn, slowly, but they learn just like the rest of us have. Still, you have to get all thier junk out. Macros, VB, shudder.
People will be much easier to move in the future. Remember that it's only been a few years since PCs took everything over. What is it, 60% of PCs still have Windows 98 on them? What this means is that most people have never suffered a real M$ upgrade. After one of those, you can swap out everthing and make them just as happy as anyone.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.