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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.""
Foo.
Improved is such a generalization, and it will be interpreted and realized in that manner. Microsoft will undoubtably continue to bundle more crap into it, tie proprietary formats to it, ignore generally accepted practices of composition (delivering their own, which break pages on rival browsers, a la the Opera Bork-Bork-Bork fiasco), uselessly incorporate it into all their product lines (regarless if it makes any sense, i.e. XBox 3, all games played through a browser) and continue with the practice of patenting and copyrighting everything they can think of to fend off competition.
We've seen all this before.
"isn't that another tentacle around your throat?"
"yes, but it's an improved tentacle and i'm certain i feel better about it than the last one."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I don't think this article said anything useful. Clearly MS has to offer at least something if they want to remain in the browser market. It's taking time, but Firefox is gaining more and more ground.
It's not a bad thing if Microsoft wants to innovate with their web browser - more competition is a good thing. It will make everyone's internet experience better. Having two competing browsers is definitely a better playing field than just one monopolistic browser.
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
consider ways to manage browser coexistence because that is the most likely long-term outcome:
Maybe 2 browser engines world.. But with AOL Browser coming out (who has its own userbase already) And Netscape 8, and continued development on firefox, and IE, and continued development on opera, two browsers seems like a bit of a stretch, two major browsers even seems like a stretch in the not so distant future..
As the de facto sysadmin of my family it's a one browser world (regardless of platform). There are only so many spyware/adware/malware removal sessions on Windows that I can do in my life.
Speak truth to power.
Who are these "gartner" people, how do they make money by stating the obvious, and how do I get in on that action?
IT people should have gotten used to a multi-browser (i.e. more than 2) world 10 years ago. And by "getting used to a multi-browser world," I mean, "welcoming the benefits of a heterogeneous software environment by writing standards compliant code, validating that code, and testing it against multiple browsers".
Nah, actually, the first 10% is the hardest. Once 10% of the people (and that's a 60 million people or so out of 600,000,000 computer users) know about a product, it becomes mainstream enough for most people to feel confortable trying it. most people are sheep and don't want to get in front where the wolves are. (nothing wrong with this strategy by the way)
"Piter, too, is dead."
Highlander! There can be only one!
It's a very Gartner "quadrant" thing to say, to be so deterministic. It's as if Gartner can only see a world in which one company drives the web.
No mention of W3C or standards or the state of plugin specifications, or anything about frameworks for interoperability.
These three analysts are Ray Valdes, David Mitchell Smith and Whit Andrews. I question the assertion that the growth of Firefox is based on unsustainable market conditions? Like what? That IE is insecure? If IE becomes "secure" will that immediately revert to the IT paradigm these guys are familiar with, where one technology emerges and drives standards?
Could it POSSIBLY be that Gartner analysts just don't see a larger force at work, that when open source products compete on quality and stability and unify their distribution methods, they are INHERENTLY more desireable, even on closed operating systems, than proprietary browsers? Because the standards can't be wrested into corporate control and the IT industry is waking up to the benefits of open source?
This is why I prefer Burton to Gartner. Burton papers tend to see things more how I see them. I have no axe to grind, nor do I work for Burton. I just encourage you, as the reading IT professional or hobbyist, not to revere the Gartner name blindly.
I pulled some very old Gartner papers out the other day, and they were laughably wrong about web standards 5 years ago. I don't trust them anymore now.
I'm confused. See I keep hearing that all these government guys get paid to promote and ensure that the there is plenty of competition in the market. Then I hear about 2 HUGE companies merging so that they can compete against the the only remaining competitor in the market. So now instead of 3 competing in the market it's just 2. And I hear the same government guys saying "Yeah, that's okay, we understand needing to compete, go right ahead".
Then we hear all these analysts talk about how competition drives innovation, competition is good, it keeps companies agile, blah blah blah.
Then we have groups like Gartner floating articles which in essence say Microsoft needs to win the "browser war" so that companies only have to deal with ONE browser. It's sounds an awful lot like winning the browser war means completely wiping out the competition instead of just holding a commanding lead. Why is it that there's a war anyway? I wish corporations would stop running campaigns against each other as if they were trying to channel G.W. Bush.
Why isn't Gartner promoting companies focusing on a standard vs. a product. While I understand their profit model is based of of referring people to specific products that they review and track shouldn't part of their advice be to not rely on a specific product because of the potential for competing products to take the lead. Isn't part of the analysis they do predicting what might come in the future and how to leverage current products and allow for flexibility when markets change.
Or are they really saying "There's no need or room for competition within the browser market. Just use IE if you can, until it becomes too unsafe. Firefox can't hold out forever, it will fail. Just keep waiting for Longhorn."
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
For all its advantages, Firefox growth is driven mainly by the way Microsoft keeps tripping over its own feet when responding to security issues. It's not so much that they were careless in designing the browser to begin with. What hurts them is that they can't seem to keep up with the problem. Patches take forever, and often introduce new problems. And many people can't even install the patches! IT people are looking at Firefox simply because they can't continue to live with Internet Explorer.
I just had a thought. I've long suspected that the IE codebase is a real mess, and may have already reached "critical mass", where every bug fix creates, on average, more than one new bug. If Firefox's challenge to IE's supremacy ever becomes an issue, MS will have to consider a scorched-earth strategy: abandon the IE codebase and build a new browser from scratch. A horribly expensive strategy, but then MS can afford it.
Fortunately, by the time that Longhorn is released, everyone will be running Firefox on Google's forthcoming operating system.
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.
Absolutely. What must scare Microsoft most about open source is that even if you won the "war", you haven't defeated it. Look at the lame ass window managers that continue to get maintained, because somebody out there likes them and finds them useful.
When the Netscape threw in the towel that should have been it, but they open sourced their browser and it has arisen like an evil dead zombie. Microsoft can shoot it, knife it, dismember it, and bury it, but as long as someone somewhere wants it to live, it will crawl out of its grave to work its evil once more.
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