Lessons from the Browser Wars

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."

Comments

heres a lesson

[wwmedia]

Heres a bit of information for people who dont know this already and will be shocked as much as i was

Firefox/Mozilla are making millions!

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/11/053924 5

..thanks to google paying them every time someone doeas a google search from the browser

now how many times a day u search using the google search built into firefox??



ill probably be flamed out of existence but hell this is /.

Re:rapidly improving technologies? eh

[Dolda2000]

I think there's some kind of misunderstanding. Since they also say that it is a "competition between two viable alternatives", I'm sure they aren't talking about IE vs. FF. Maybe it was Opera or Safari they compared to Firefox? Either way, I think it is rather weird of them to make a study of the browser wars without mentioning IE (unless, maybe, they don't consider IE to be a browser, which I could understand), but who am I to speak? I've never understood marketing studies anyway. Or IE, for that matter.