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The Browser Wars Are Back?
jpkunst writes "ZDNet UK reports and PCWorld.com report that, according to Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, whose comments came during a discussion with Yahoo Chief Operating Officer Dan Rosensweig at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco on Wednesday, 'the browser wars are back', thanks to the emerging popularity of products such as Apple's Safari and the open-source Firefox. Andreessen warned that 'competition could compel the company [Microsoft] to use aggressive tactics to protect its Windows operating system monopoly'."
Firefox, Safari? What about Opera! I'm sick of
being left out of the browser wars. I like my
mouse gesture enabled browser thak you very much.
Yeah, Microsoft might take some REALLY extreme tactic to protect their monopoly -- like giving their browser away for free, bundled with the operating system! Oh, wait....
Well it's about time- we were damn close to having actual web standards. Glad we dodged that bullet.
Opera's Not Free
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Just watch Safari & Firefox development and imitate the functionality. Joe User then has no compelling reason to switch.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
When my company started putting "Best Viewed in Firefox/Mozilla" on the intranet . I knew that the browser wars are over .
.NET and Java) ... but I suspect Mozilla's not as slow as Java in responding , especially when it's Microsoft
Microsoft may be able to do something however late it is (see
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
"Microsoft attempts to destroy all browsers in new version of Windows by causing them to make farting sounds every time you visit a web site."
Oooh, even better do that with IE!
What a better way to keep workers from using it -- emberass them!
There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
Firefox will most likely gain a lot of ground but I don't think it will come out on top. I would love to see it come out on top but Microsoft has a lot of ground it they're not going to give it up without a fight.
as bad as it sounds. You add browser hijacking, security holes in MS OS's volla!
MS needs to unhook the browser from the OS, i think this turned out to be a major assbiter for them now. Becuase it is so intertwined they have allowed the holes to become easily exploitable.
maybe they will finally rewrite IE and allow for it to be better? but lets not cross our fingers
This issue seems to have come to a head in the past year or so, particular in the corporate environment.
I am IT director for a small division of a company near Philadelphia, and the problems caused by IE in our environment have increased greatly in the past year. We spend more time than ever fixing problems caused by spyware in particular.
This also falls into a timeframe when the browser alternatives have been getting much better (Mozilla, Firefox). We are currently planning to move everyone to Firefox as their default browser once it has been released as 1.0 or better.
You mean, like actually putting some developers on IE and shining it up a bit? At least give it a bit of XP flavor or something, call it IE 2005 or something.
-Randy
And I certainly don't browse with IE; I use Firefox. I use Windows on my laptop because it's most convenient for what I do. Furthermore, it's also convenient just to have a Windows box lying around :)
That said, I use SuSE 9.1 on my desktop and I love it dearly. I wouldn't go back for any reason. Yes, there's still the occasional glitch or issue I don't know how to resolve, but I'm fine with that.
Microsoft needs to understand, though, that if any sort of aggressive monopoly protection significantly affects the way in which I use my laptop computer, WindowsXP SP 2 will be going the same way as the Windows XP on my desktop: right out the, er, window.
When were they gone?
I believe that was declared with the PMSNBC.com article that trumpeted "BROWSER WARS OVAR!!" and thus went on to claim IE the victor....
By what standard, i don't know...
Currently, i view MS as a hibernating giant- with Longhorn getting pushed back again and again, and IE just barely adding some bolted-on features of late (but yet not really fixing any of the severe issues with it)... and so forth...
If we, Apple, or anyone is going to put a sizeable dent into the Windows Entrenchment, *NOW* is the time...
do() || do_not();
Maybe the browser wars are back, but that gasbag Andreessen is clamoring to be back at any rhetorical cost. He hasn't done anything useful since he butchered HTML with the badly coded tag, which he couldn't even code himself at NCSA. Since then, he's gone from expensive blowhard spokesmodel for the biggest IPO in history, to has-been blown '90s dude. Only _Wired_ even listens to him anymore.
--
make install -not war
It's foolish to think that alternative browsers will ever have more than a few percentage points as long as users have what appears to them be a perfectly good browser sitting on their computer when they unpack it from Dell/Gateway/Whatever. We're talking about people who for the most part don't have the competence to download security fixes, let alone downloading a new browser. Just as Windows is synonymous with computers for most people, IE is synonymous for the Internet. I'll believe the browser wars are back when Dell (oor similar) bundles Firefox with their machines.
Holy cow! Microsoft is going to start using agressive tactics? How will we ever survive?
When my company started putting "Best Viewed in Firefox/Mozilla"...
Why do people continue to insist on stupid "Best viewed with X" labels. Your website should be developed to display properly on any standards-compliant browser, and not be restricted to a particular platform or application.
Why not put up one of those "Try Firefox" icons instead of implying that other standards-compliant browsers (namely Opera) might have trouble with your poorly-designed site?
But with Netscape turning into Mozilla and then being spunoff into Firefox, and Safari along with Opera and Omni giving even MORE choices, there now are more browsers that dont support microsoft standards than do.
Now you couple the fact that a large number of in the know people have now said to NOT use IE because of numerous widely publisised security breaches, and the once barely existant browser war has regained steam.
The best analogy would be the World Wars. It might be considered one long war, but there was a long break where hostilities stoped.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
I don't know about the rest of you, but I still find myself having to explain what a web browser is to 90% of the people I know that use the internet. Many of these people think that their web browser is called "MSN" or "Yahoo." They pull up a portal site as their home page and actually enter URLs into the search window and wait for the portal site to give them the link. I try to tell them about the wonders of Firefox, and they stare at me blankly and say, "But I'm perfectly happy with Yahoo."
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Also: What market share? If browsers are freely-available, is it really a "market"?
Now that IE is free as in beer and is the 900-pound gorilla, what will make people switch to alternatives en masse? Are security scares enough motivation? My experience is that "Normal" people seem to care little about the "backdoor of the week" syndrome, and they feel specially secure when they have turned automatic updates on
So, why will people switch?
Firefox & Co. are coming back, and that software is indeed technically superior to IE. However, Mozilla foundation still misses one crucial piece of the puzzle: a distribution channel. Until somebody with a big distribution channel jumps in and helps Mozilla, my web server access log will continue showing Mozilla user base growth of less than 1%/month/year.
That is where GBrowser comes into play. Google has a massive distribution channel that knows no OS boundaries.
Simpy
The reason that Micro$oft cannot win in this kind of fight is that there is no company paying the salaries of the programmers developing FireFox. It is a volunteer effort.
In the case of the Netscape browser, Netscape was a commerical company and essentially cut its own jugular in funding Netscape development and support and giving it away for free, but where could Netscape get its money to grow? It tried branching into commercial Web servers, but there were too many competitors in that market. Netscape was headed for bankruptcy.
In the case of FireFox, there is no company for Micro$oft to crush. Round 1 and the game goes to FireFox and the open-source movement. <applause>
Microsoft is waiting for the competition to come up with all the new ideas and take the lead. Microsoft will then implement these ideas in IE with their own take on the idea.
Microsoft will then hype up these new developments as if they were their ideas and go on about how their right to innovate is important.
news.com.com.com.com.com
:-/ unless it gets as good as a real d/l manager, it is more of a hassle!
I think Microsoft still want to keep people on IE, but they are unable to concentrate thier efforts, and with the hullabaloo they are working behind the scenes to 'extract' the browser.
IE has kinda been tapered into a usable yet dangerous browser - firefox is fairly good (I have a wish list and potential bug list too long for me to sift through bugzilla reports)
Opera is good, does its job.
What is next for the humble browser? Integration? Better / faster rendering? I think not.
Perhaps being able to do a simple task better.
I personally would preffer my email and web in one box, so thunderbird developers write a neat plugin for firefox that combines them quickly and seamlessly.
And the sunbird calendar is good. Again, I want them in one side bar, F7 for mail and F8 for calendar, Fsomethingelse bookmarks, Fagain for RSS links.
And remove the download window
I like the autodownload features, I can rip down pdf files from a list without fsssskking Adowbee Acrowbaht Readuh trying to happily rape my ram.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Yes it is.
There's a Google ads-supported free version of Opera and a paid for ad-free version. Either way, you've got a damn good browser, arguably the best one around.
A great deal of the features that FireFox users rave about came from Opera, and every version brings even more innovation. It's even smaller and faster than FireFox too (IIRC.)
And, before someone starts saying that its UI takes up too much screen space, let me just say that the default interface in the latest version is tiny (and, of course, Opera can be skinned and customised to your taste). While I'm on the subject of dispelling myths and inaccuracies, Opera renders virtually every web page out there as well as MSIE or FireFox: there were problems with some JavaScript-heavy pages in the past, but that's been fixed for a long time too.
About the only website that the current version Opera has a problem with is Gmail, because of all its weird code, and even then there are simple workarounds for that. The issue is fixed in the latest beta, which means that even that problem is only temporary.
So, to recap, Opera is a smaller, faster, more feature-packed browser that's on the cutting edge. And there's a free version and a paid-for version. What more did you want from a commercially-developed application?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Honestly, I think MS has little to fear of Mozilla & Co.
Don't mod me Troll, I love Firefox, Safari and Opera and use them almost exclusively. Yet when I try to convince my Windows-using friends the reaction is usually "But the included browser (if they know this expression) works fine. I'm used to it."
It's incredibly difficult to compete with a program that comes installed with the OS.
I think the population of really internet-savy people, people who care about their browser, is no more than 5-10%. These people can be won. The vast majority will stay with IE.
I don't need a signature.
Just who do you think came up with mouse gestures? Opera did, that's who. Everyone else's mouse gestures are "me too" additions.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
For I design my sites to standards.
(Sure, I kludge it a little to make it look 100% in all the major browsers, but it still validates w3c.)
vk.
I have a purpose for just about every browser out there:
;)
Firefox - Everyday browsing (Duh!)
IE - College webmail reading (ActiveX)
Netscape - When I feel like being punished
Opera - Searching for pr0n! (Those one-handed guestures.
Just seems to me you can appreciate them all!
Make Love not [Browser] War.
-----
Make Love not [Browser] War!
Who do you think would win in a fight between THIS guy, and THIS guy. It's no contest.
Yes, they are, because merely by posting this story, we've got a war raging in the comments right here on /.
"You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older."
Using your example:
Person A buys a new computer, and uses the IE browser because they could care less what they use.
Person A then gets a crap load of spyware on there computer, and then bugs that one geek that they know to fix there computer. Then the geek says.... I don't need to fix your computer, just download and install Firefox. Don't use that IE piece of crap.
Boom, there we go, problem fixed. This is exactly how I've gotten firefox on people's computers. I haven't heard of one story of a lamen user who has been tired of IE, so they searched out a better brower, and picked up firefox or opera.
It's always been because there geek friend telling them to use it. Geeks are what are powering this new browser war. If Microsoft fixes there brower, we are in trouble.
-Derek
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
Microsoft cut off Netscape's air supply to prevent Navigator from making the OS irrelevant (by hosting the JVM). I don't think there is any such danger from Safari or Firefox.
Just my two cents.
On one of my old systems, Opera happened to be the only browser light/fast enough to run reasonably on that system.
:( It crashed frequently, even more often than IE on my Windows boxes.
My main dislike of it? It was unstable as hell.
At that time, Mozilla was massively bloated. From what I've heard, and experienced, Firefox is much closer to Opera in terms of size and speed than the Mozilla of old, and it's *damn stable*.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Andreessen warned that 'competition could compel the company [Microsoft] to use aggressive tactics to protect its Windows operating system monopoly'.
Top story for Saturday, October 11, 2008:
Microsoft strikes back as browser war rages on
"Thousands more found dead today as orbital lasers owned by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) were deployed to eliminate useres of competing browser products. Using code that interfaces with the GPS component of the DRM system now part of every home PC and relaying this information to Microsoft, the beams were very precisely targeted, according to a Microsoft press release. Though many are outraged, the acts are uncontestable in court as each of the victims were also users of Microsoft Windows and had agreed to the "No Open Source" clause in the EULA."
I think I spent too much time playing Cyberpunk 2020 as a kid...
Oh, was that my outside voice?
I was a die-hard IE guy. But what with CERT recommending using an alternate browser for security purposes.. and Microsoft's own recommendations for security all but disabling many sites (I believe their recommendation was to turn off active scripting).. that was when I switched browsers.
But, alas, because "Set program access and defaults" doesn't actually do $hit.. last weekend I was infected by spyware using IE. Nasty, nasty stuff that just won't die.
So IE is out for me.. I don't blame Microsoft for the malware (although I DO blame them for a link opening with IE when I had FF set as the default..).. but enough is enough.
The sites that don't work properly with FF are few.. and I can easily decide if the site is worthy of really browsing by using the open in IE extension.
My criticism of FF is that extensions break with each release, and that security updates are not available as patches (I could tolerate ONE of them.. but combined it's really a nuisance).
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Because IE isn't standards-compliant and barfs on standards-compliant pages very often.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
So where are the WMBD (weapons of mass browser destruction)?
Why are we going to war? Is this approved by the UN? (Is France in on this)? Is this Bush's Idea?
Even though I *am* here on OS X, methinks you don't know what 'monopoly' means. It doesn't mean that there aren't any other choices, it means that MS leverages their market share in their OS to stifle competition in other areas.
Go back a few years, and read about the original browser war. That is a good example. Or see what MS did to BeOS's OEM program.
Now watch this C: drive.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
After being ignored the 1st time I decided to keep a copy the text of my latest email to Bellsouth. When trying to access their page with my latest version of Opera I am told to "upgrade" to IE or Netscape. For the record most of the times when I access this page it's to pay my bill.
---
Once again I would like to renew my request that your website be updated to support all modern browsers. The idea that by running a current version of Opera but then being told to "upgrade" speaks poorly of your website and it's staff.
The fact that all one must do to access Bellsouth's website is to change the user agent gives lie to the fact any upgrade is need.
Please respect your customers by allowing them the option of using whatever modern browser they wish instead of making them think that they must use a browser that has so many security issues that the federal government has dissuaded it's use or one that has become outdated.
Thank you.
---
Yes it may be a little harsh but sometimes you have to be pretty forthright to get past the corperate mindset. Until I get a response I plan on sending this same text once a week.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
That would be the properly selected ones like the LAYER tag then? Or JSSS as the prefered alternative to CSS?
Netscapes track record pre-Mozilla with the W3C makes MS look like angels.
Firefox is a fantastic browser, but lets not start revising history. The original Netscape sucked and deserved to fall flat on its face.
Netscape 6 & 7 were based on Mozilla, with added "features."
Question:
Where are you going to find investors when you offer that kind of return?
Seriously, IBM already has an Office Suite, SmartSuite. They charge $$$ for it. We get it free with our StinkPads and don't use it. Why?
Well looking at how well IBM has pushed OS/2, Notes, 1-2-3 and Ami-Pro, which was only like the best Word Processor EVAR, they've shown they can't manager Software. Why rely on stuff that won't be around and isn't compatible with anything?
Novells^WSCOs record isn't much better.
$30 Off All Plans: Use code TRIPLESAWBUCK
I'm a web designer/programmer among other things at work, so I have most of the browsers available for testing. I use IE as my main browser on my PC, but I also have FireFox & Netscape for testing purposes. At home I have an iMac. I have Safari, Netscape Navigator & IE installed. I tried OmniWeb, but was unimpressed. IMHO, Safari is far and away the best browser out there, and I'm not even using the version that supports RSS. I still have to use IE whenever I want to print something (odd that an MS product on the Mac would print better?), but that's about all. Maybe you PC people will luck out and Apple will make Safari for Windows. I am thoroughly convinced that if Macromedia ever decided to make a web browser, they would blow everybody out of the water!
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Your therory is good.. However FF is not full of the holes IE is. + it dosnt run activeX. So... I don't see a problem. Plus there are updating it. unlike IE ever gets..
The main, perhaps only reason I still use IE is that I find the Yahoo Companion toolbar extremely useful - mainly it's ability to integrate with my online Yahoo Bookmarks and allow me to store/retrieve/edit them from.
If there was something similar but more generic for Firefox, I'd probably switch over..
Any suggestions?
The Nazis felt they were bred to be superior (period).
Its less importent to know what the Nazis felt. Its more importent to find out why so many germans played along. And the reasons for that are to be found in WW I (the versailles treaty giving the germans the sole responsibility for the war, forbidding almost all military, and requesting reparations that made it impossible for germany to recover economically. The reason for WWII is the way WWI was ended. check your facts here.
The french wanted revenge (why else did they pickk versailles) for 1870 but went over the top. In the end this was the foundation for another war.
I'm sorry, but you've taken the "change letters in a word to express your disgust" principle to ridiculous extremes. M$ is acceptable here at Slashdot. "LongTHORN" is just silly. I vote to suspend your account. Any other takers?
A renewed browser war is going to benefit everybody. Microsoft has sat on its ass for far, far too long and allowed IE to stagnate. That was arrogant on their part and now they have to play catch-up to the Mozilla/Firefox/Safari browsers. Regardless of which browser you prefer, real competition and innovation is a good thing and should be welcomed by everybody.
Jim Lynch
Tech Analyst and Community Manager
Sure, standards compliant is important, choice is important, and it's good that non IE browsers are finally getting attention. And it's nice to see Mozilla.org getting so much coverage in the mainstream media after all these years. And yes, do expect more sites to become more standards compliant in the coming months.
However, I feel that most of this talk of the browser wars being back and Firefox gaining market share are pretty irrelevant now.
The original browser wars started when MS realised the threat Netscape posed to its dominance on the desktop. Their fear was that the web browser (Netscape) would bypass the OS. This is precisely what Netscaped planned -- their intention was to reduce windows to "a buggy set of device drivers". This threat prompted MS to massively invest in their web browser (IE), and integrate it with future versions of Windows. IE eventually became the dominant browser on the web, and Netscape became a minor player.
But the web, and web browsing as they stand today are still fairly far from the old vision. Firefox and the other browsers will make the web slightly nicer, and IE's market share may just drop rapidly over the next year or so.
But is MS worried? No. Even if IE's market share falls massively in the near future, it is not Microsoft's concern. The real future lies in the next generation of web browsers. With Longhorn we are likely to see a hugely rewamped browser (probably rewritten from scratch), and built probably for potentially nasty things like XAML. That would be more of a realisation of the old vision.
The OSS world is obviously not blind to this. Mono addresses this possibility, and is trying to make an MS compatible XAML implementaion. Mozilla too has been drawing up plans for the future.
But either way, the browser wars as they are won't be here forever. Eventually (2006-07, perhaps), web access and interactivity would be so fundamental to the operating system shell itself, that the "web browser" as a stand alone app would be irrelevant.
Your right, except the british navy was the most powerful navy in the world.
It's a nice tool for documents of small or medium size, but the document format is a nightmare. Try changing the margins in Word 97, for example, and then reading the result in Word 2000. The margins are all messed up in many cases... :-(
If only they'd kept the document format simple and added a nice "review codes" feature like WordPerfect used to have...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
ASP.net,outlook web access, CRM, sharepoint, and pretty much all other MS web apps will not work on anything other than IE. Firefox activeX plug-in still does not get around this. Forcing Corp. users to stay on IE is a great way to keep people stuck on IE.
But I thought that Microsoft got rid of all of the competition by illegal exercise of its monopoly power?
The good news is that innovation (including better security) are good reasons to switch from even heavily-entrenched products.
The bad news is that some people may have to admit that Microsoft isn't as guilty as they want it to be. IE beat Netscape for the simple reason that it sucked less. Sure, maybe being a "monopoly" helped, but that doesn't mean much when browsers were and are still given away for free (a trend which M$ didn't start).
If Firefox overtakes IE, I win. If IE gets better, I still win. If Netscape pulls out from under years of browsers not any better and usually worse and more bloaty than IE, I still win. I win, I win, I win. And, honestly, I don't care who else wins with me. It can be MS, or Apple, or the open source community. The point is that competition is still alive in the browser world, even if all of the things Netscape whined about were true.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
So where are the WMBD (weapons of mass browser destruction)?
Microsoft Internet Exploder
I put a 'Best viewed using a computer!' notice up on a site I built.
THOSE OF US WHO GET INTERNET ACCESS VIA TELEGRAPH FIND THIS DISCRIMINATORY STOP WE DONT ALL HAVE COMPUTERS STOP SO PLEASE STOP
Along with a 'Web server powered by electricity'...
SOME PEOPLE I KNOW STILL USE SMOKE SIGNALS STOP
It seems to me that the typical person I deal with lately catches on pretty quickly to the idea of using a different web browser. Every single home computer I've worked on in the last couple months has been barely usable due to all the spyware on them.
After cleaning up their machines I install Firefox and tell them about the pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing. I tell them that at this point they should only use IE as a last resort. The explaination literally takes about 30 seconds and I haven't had any problems with people not "getting it."
I've done this for easily a dozen different people in the last month, and every one I've talked to afterwards has mentioned how much nicer it is browsing with Firefox.
Maybe I've just been lucky with the people I've done work for recently, but it seems to me that most people are more than happy to make the switch once the software is installed and demonstrated to them.
Undoubtedly there are people out there that just can't be bothered (from what I've read on here at least,) but at that point it's their problem and they'll be paying me if I have to come back and clean the crap off their computer again.
PS: I just wish Firefox would render Slashdot consistently. WTF?
Netscape: No. I am your father
Mozilla: No. No. That's not true! That's impossible!
Netscape: Search your source code. You know it to be true.
Netscape: You can destroy the Internet Explorer. He has foreseen this. It is
your destiny. Join me, and we can rule the internet as father and son. Come with me. It's the only way.
Slashdot = -1 Redundant, Asperger, kdawson FUD, Libertarian, and Linux