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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."
The interviewee didn't say Microsoft was innovating; she said that in the rapidly expanding market for web browsers in the 1990's, Microsoft was able to grab new users rather than convincing the users of Netscape and other borwsers to change over.
Read TFA, it's about market structure and how the basic assumptions of competitive equilibrium don't hold in the real world. Under basic and simple economic theory, consumers are totally rational and informed, but in the real world, they'll use whatever is put in front of them, as long as it isn't too terrible. She didn't say a single good thing about Microsoft.
I know we all have a big boner for Firefox, though.
Thank you for putting a blank line after every two sentences.
It really helped make it more readable.
Plus it looks longer, so it doesn't get read and is marked informative.
Hey, maybe the mods will see I'm copying you and probably being sarcastic and I'll get modded funny... nah.
Plane, whoosh, head, over?
I'm really sick of people attacking IE.
Me too, that's why I never use it.
You can't take the sky from me...