Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Windows Browser Ballot: the Winners and the Losers

Posted by timothy on from the bureaucrats-one dept.

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."

3 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. That agrees with my figures by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:That agrees with my figures by oliverthered · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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?

      --
      thank God the internet isn't a human right.
  2. Obligatory XKCD by rsmith-mac · · Score: 5, Funny

    Extrapolation: because past performance perfectly predicts future growth.