Microsoft and Mozilla's continuing Chrome conundrum

The biggest advantage Chrome has over the others (for now) is invisible auto-updating. That alone makes it more compliant and more secure at any given moment.<p>As a web developer, I want everyone in the world to have a modern browser, always. When HTML6 comes out, I want to be able to use it. So my goal is not just to get everyone to upgrade to FF4 or IE9, but to put everyone on a path of continuous upgrades forever. Chrome is the easy way to do that right now. So I will champion it.<p>Hopefully Firefox will get on board with this soon.

Neither of those battles tells the whole story, and it's a shame to see the same boring "browser versus browser" story again.<p>Firstly, out of all the other browsers that Mozilla would want to have take share, Chrome is the obvious first choice due to shared ethos and belief in the future direction of the web (e.g. WebM, WebRTC, WebGL etc.). The last choice would be IE, which is where Chrome is mostly taking share. Chrome's gains are therefore only a positive for Mozilla. Of course in a perfect world they could take that share themselves, but in reality I don't think they've got the advertising budget to reach many of those people still on IE. So they're more like a tag-team than rivals.<p>On the other hand, Microsoft doesn't give a hoot if its browser is getting trounced. Its sole purpose for existing is to hold the web back in defence of their other cash cows, and it's the prospect of attack on that front that must keep them up at night as Chrome uptake accelerates. Viewed in that light, producing a half decent browser like IE9 is a failure, even if they have salvaged some tiny upside by restricting it to their newer OSes.

&#62;<i>"If Microsoft wants to halt the downward slide—let alone regain share—it's going to take more than a new browser release every so often."</i><p>That seems to be a big "if." From Microsoft's perspective, it is difficult to see producing the latest greatest browser as a key strategic goal - that's not to say that a solid competent browser suitable for businesses and acceptable as a default by ordinary consumers is not important.<p>For Microsoft the browser features which are critical are quite different from those of other browser providers - Microsoft needs a browser which above all provides a large degree of predictability, stability, and automation for enterprise and business - pursuing Google's new release every week strategy would be counter productive to Microsoft's need to provide a browser which is well integrated into their technology stack. Consumer choice will never drive Microsoft's browser development (hence we don't see IE for OSX or Linux).<p>The idea that Microsoft losing browser market share is a disaster lacks an explanation of why. IE's market dominance was a liability for Microsoft (e.g. the EU settlement) and IE itself is largely a cost center not a revenue generator - how many consumers upgraded from XP just for IE9 and how much revenue did that generate relative to the amount Microsoft spent on supporting IE6 over the years?<p>If Microsoft was like Google or Mozilla, the loss in browser market share would affect their bottom line. But they aren't, and it doesn't.

I really feel the battle is being fought on the wrong field. While it's great and nice to have more release dates and new features as an assortment of letters and numbers that the majority of the population has never heard of, past the initial adoption, browsers are very much a marketing problem.<p>If you ask the average surfer how excited he/she is about WebM, WebRTC, WebGL, XAML, WPF, etc in a new browser you'll probably get blank stare, a dropped jaw, and at best, a response of "how fast is it?" Chrome has begun to set a precedence for being fast and uncluttered, which is why the majority of people have probably switched. I ran/run a fairly large project serving primarily the 17-22 demographic, and in the course of a year from January 2009 to 2010, Chrome useage on my forums had increased from just under 5% to a stunning 29%.<p>Realistically, the IE brand is already damaged. If MSFT really wants to compete with Firefox and Chrome, their best bet is to create another browser for the new-adopters market.

Even with a minority share, Google has all the initiative in the browser market right now. They have forced their competitors to speed up development and support standards. Rapid releases, HTML 5 support and fast javascript engines benefit google as the overall web experience gets faster.<p>A secondary benefit for Google is that Microsoft is basically forced to commoditize their own platform APIs in order to stay relevant in the browser market.

My browsing experience is very minimalistic: I want adblock, flashblock, and <i>speed</i>.<p>Firefox is bloated and slow on every platform I've used it on since Firefox 3. Back when Firefox was Phoenix (0.7 or so), its goal was to be "lean and mean", so I switched from Mozilla Netscape.<p>I use Chrome because it's fast and does exactly what I need it for. If Firefox wants me back, it will have to be much faster (UI, not web-wise), and not suck memory like a vacuum cleaner. Likely it'll have to use per-process tabs with some spiff sandboxing too.<p>Chrome continuous update is pretty awesome as well.

Windows 8's squares and panes (edit: "tiles") will be programmable using HTML &#38; JS. I think it's very likely that MS will add proprietary extensions to that JS code that will only render correctly in IE 10. I don't really know if MS still has enough clout to parlay that artificial "advantage" into browser marketshare, but they might.

I wonder how much of that loss is due to people adopting Mac vs PC?