Windows Browser Ballot: the Winners and the Losers

Barence writes "It's a year since the Windows browser ballot came into being in Europe — but has it made any difference? PC Pro has surveyed the minor browser makers — who theoretically had the most to gain from the ballot — to find out what impact it's had on their business. The answers are very mixed. One of the 12, FlashPeak SlimBrowser, claims it's resulted in fewer than 200 downloads per day. Others claim it's transformed their business. One thing is for certain: the big boys still dominate."

Comments

That agrees with my figures

[Gadget_Guy]

I ran the browser usage by year through a spreadsheet a couple of months ago and found the same thing. The decline in Internet Explorer usage was remarkably consistent over the years. The EU's browser choice appeared to make no difference in the usage deltas for all the browsers. I didn't look at the less used browsers, but I imagine that they would be the true winners because hardly anybody would have heard of the minor players if it weren't for being on this list.

It just goes to show that the reason that IE got to have so much dominance was not because it was bundled with the operating system, but that for far too long it had no real competition.

Re:That agrees with my figures

[kevinmenzel]

And since none of the major browser trends changed with the introduction of the Ballot, it also shows that the entire situation was overblown, and that there was a competitive market in place which was (and is) correcting the mistake of leaving IE uncontested for so long.

Re:That agrees with my figures

[oliverthered]

I think it could be described as too late in some ways.... what would have happened if this was in there from the start?
would it have created a more equal market for competition to develop in. overblown, it's been what 10 years?

Re:That agrees with my figures

[icebraining]

So the main goal of a for-profit company should be to develop an equal marketplace for its competitors?

No, the main goal should be to make as much profit as possible without abusing its dominant position on a market by manipulating other markets.

This was just Europe showing a US company who was boss. If Ikea made Windows, this would never have happened.

OK, then show us an example where a company in the EU was abusing a dominating position in a market by tying another product to it. Competition law is applied to EU based companies all the time.

When can we see Apple told how to conduct its business by some fascists?

By fascists? I have no idea. But the EU already said Apple can't prevent developers from porting the same apps they sell on the Apple Store to other platforms.

Re:Link A has more hits than link B

[houghi]

But too many choices will confuse the general public

Yet limiting their choices is NOT an option. I am 'confused' by the amount of stores I can buy things. I am 'confused' by the sorts of food I can buy. Clothes, computers, cars, camera's, women... All things where I am 'confused' by the choice I have.

Yet I rather be confused than somebody else make the choice for me.

Got to love lousy statisticians

[SmallFurryCreature]

Yeah yeah, extrapolating future trends by drawing a straight line between past points. That is SUCH a reliable method.

But hey, good news, by these figures IE will be at 0% in 5 years and Google at well over a 100%.

The browser ballot changed things, would the lines have been as they are now without it? Nobody knows but it is not beyond imagination that IE would have bottomed out 50% instead and might even have climbed with the release of IE9.

Basically, those who claim the ballot did not have an affect are claiming something like the new iPhone had no effect on iPhone sales. The old one was selling well, the new one sells well, ergo no change... because the old one would of course have done the same sale figures without a new release.

Obligatory XKCD

[rsmith-mac]

Extrapolation: because past performance perfectly predicts future growth.

Re:Link A has more hits than link B

[Pentium100]

Microsoft has a monopoly in the desktop OS market. And yes, monopoly does not mean that MS is the only supplier, it means that it has very large market share and as such, it influences the market and can influence other markets more so than some other company.

Let's say that Microsoft made it so that WebM video codec (or, say, Firefox) does not work on Windows. Very few people will change their OS just to use the single program that does not work, so the result would be that the market share of Firefox or WebM would decrease sharply. On the other hand, if some Linux distribution made it so that it was not possible to run Wine (and in turn, windows programs) or h.264, the impact on the usage of those programs would not change much (even assuming that everyone stayed with their distribution).

I hear the internet connectivity in the USA is great, you have so many options that you can choose and the competition between ISPs is so fierce that my 80mbps connection must seem like dial-up to you. I mean if one ISP starts capping the connection or offers only DSL you can just move to some other ISP...

Microsoft makes a good OS (well, somehow people are buying and using it, so it must be good or Microsoft somehow manages to make it happen wven though the OS is not that good), but it should not have the power to dictate other markets (what if it made Windows only compatible with Intel CPUs, or just AMD CPUs? Should it hold that much power over the CPU manufacturers?)

Same thing with the browser. A lot of people do not know what a "browser" is, they just use the blue "e" to get to the internet. IE is not the best browser (IE8 is Ok, but this started when the newest IE version was 6) and it is not compatible with the standards, so web designers have to make pages compatible with IE and the standard browsers or they would lose clients. That's why the EU made Microsoft offer users a choice, it was hoped that some of the users would find out about the choice that they have (if someone uses IE because he prefers it, the menu was just a one time annoyance, for others, it offered a choice).

Someone will now say that notepad, paint and other programs are the same, so you have to offer choices on them too. Well, no. First of all, the other programs are basic and they do their job well, also, they are compatible with standard formats, so there is no harm in users continuing to use them, unlike IE, especially IE6.

Re:I like

[pandrijeczko]

Personally, I think Safari should be lumped in with "Other" because usage of it on Windows is so insignificant.