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Gartner Says it's a 2-Browser World
prostoalex writes "In its advisory to the IT managers Gartner says that even though the factors that drive the current Firefox growth are not sustainable, IT departments better get used to a two-browser world. "Concerns about security currently favor Mozilla Foundation's Firefox, but the market tide can shift if security breaches result from increased usage of Firefox", says Gartner and ZDNet adds that "Microsoft must deliver an improved version of its browser in Longhorn if it is to "determine the outcome" of the browser war.""
...is no outcome at all. I hope IE, Firefox, and all other browsers have a long lifetime ahead of them.
there are so many PHBs, so-called "Security Engineers" and other FUD gobblers that it might just take Gartner proclaiming the existence of Firefox, before anyone in Corporate America listens.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
if IE would follow the fricking W3C standards. It's retarded this debate still goes on simply because MS doesn't give a crap.
They could fix a few bugs too, it's getting old that you still have to jump through hoops to make PDFs open correctly in every version of IE from 4.0 to 6.
Microsoft has for all intents and purposes conceded the non-Microsoft operating systems to the competition (Safari, Firefox, etc). Microsoft can't win a war they are not willing (able?) to fight outside of Windows.
And day by day (country by country), that space is getting bigger as countries adopt opensource or recognize the risk of supporting a US-based corporation exclusively. Will Firefox continue to make inroads into Windows? Most likely. Will it be necessary for competition to be restored? I don't believe so.
In the end Microsoft's own policy of a Windows-only world will limit their ability to fight the battle let alone win the war.
Has any analyst considered that there can be no winner to the "browser war?" Good gravy, war is certainly an easy metaphor to understand but its applicability to emerging and evolving technologies is tenuous. Better to call the competition by browser makers for the hearts of consumers a Red Queen's race. Do species stop competing for resources? Only the "stable" ones (i.e. thost that have become extinct) do.
As for bracing for the horrors of a two-platform web world, that call is many years too late. Apple's Safari is likely to be the dark horse that IT folks will have to adapt to. I think Steve Jobs means to make a big play for the PC pie. The Mac mini is as reasonable desktop as any from Dell, Gateway or Newegg (at least for corporate use).
In a perfect world, it wouldn't matter one jot what web client software is used. Browsers ought to be a whole lot stupider than they are. Just follow the meticulously defined W3C specs and lets all stop caring about "owning the platform." It's the applications that are far more interesting and carefully contrieved browser inoperabilities only stall the inevitable demotion of the underlying operating system to something akin to a really bloated BIOS.
Two browser world? Lunacy...
Yeah, because there must be a winner. It's not like we can have more than one browser or anything. There can only be one.
This is crap. The media fuels this idea of one player as much as anyone does.
The average IT department or web developer shouldn't care if it is a 1, 2, 12, or n browser world.
Ideally, we would all be coding to standards. Is your html compartible with the defined standards? XHTML, CSS, and so on?
After all, my cable company doesn't think of this as a '137 television world'... they are concerned about video standards.
Does the NBC Nightly News start up with a banner ad saying, "This broadcast best viewed on RCA Televisions"? No. That is just absurd.