If the ever increasing popularity of Firefox is any indication, or should I say, the ever decreasing popularity of Internet Explorer, the face of the web may be radically different in a very near future. In fact, if the success of Open Source software is any indication, the future might be more different than simply a world without Internet Explorer, but a world without Microsoft. However, one also has to consider Apple’s ever increasing home market and Linux’s ever so stagnant and insignificant home market, putting a rest on the whole Open Source idea, and pointing to a slightly more logical other-than-Microsoft aproach.
In any cases, this post isn’t about operating systems, it’s about browsers and their popularity that evolves relatively regardless of their supporting operating system, although browsers such as Internet Explorer and Safari, strongly linked with their company’s operating system, are heavily influenced by its popularity for the simple reason not everyone makes the effort to install another browser and remains content with what is already on the system by default, not withstanding the possibility that what is already on the system may be better.
All in all though, it’s surprising how quickly things change. It’s also surprising how unaware we are of these changes, seemingly taking for granted very recent facts. Take for example Firefox, Mozilla’s browser, back in its heydays of the 1.0 release in 2004, was still a very experimental way of firing up the web. In fact, I remember very clearly speaking up for Firefox’s merits, like its tabs, search bar and pop-up blocking, to my friends in spite of its buggy rendering of some web sites. And now, just short of 5 years from that, it’s only been a year or so since every web site supports Firefox as they do for Internet Explorer, despite developers claiming its support as if it always was a part of their life. A lot of people assume that if a web site doesn’t work in a given browser, it must in Firefox.
Many think Firefox gained that support and status among developers by simply having superior support for web standards versus Internet Explorer 6 at the time. However, a browser’s support from developers most often isn’t reflected by the browser’s support for web standards but by its popularity among users. It makes sense, why develop your web site for a browser no one’s going to use to visit your site. Firefox doesn’t even have the best engine. Less popular browsers like the emergent Google Chrome, or more so Safari and Opera have had far superior render engines for far longer, both in speed and in their respect of web standards, than Firefox ever did, proving the point; Firefox became a highly supported browser because of its popularity.
At the core of the subject though is always statistics. This is the engine that drives developers to test their web site for a particular browser. Let’s take a look. Back in 2004, Firefox only had a 4% market share, which is still a stunning adoption rate only shadowed by Internet Explorer’s takeover of Netscape. For a comparison, in about the same period of time (2 years from launch), Safari came in with about 2.1%. However, Safari hasn’t really bulged from that position, despite having an ~8% market share as of 2009. Oh, and by the way, in the same period (2 years from launch) Internet Explorer accomplished 15% of market domination, followed by a rather ruthless 35 to 80 percent market share conquest in another 2 years.
Firefox though, moved to about 22% as of the writing of this article. In fact, since its launch, Firefox has seen a steady growth rate of 3 to 4 percent per year. Conversely, Internet Explorer has seen decline in its market share from 91% in 2004 to 67% in 2009. From 2004 to 2007, Internet Explorer has seen its market share drop 4% per year, which increased from 2007 to 2009 to 6% per year, clearly indicating the growing popularity of Safari and Chrome, which, contrary to what analysts say, take users from Internet Explorer and not from Firefox.
How is this scary? Well, let’s say the market share continues to evolve in this direction, withstanding other browsers than Internet Explorer and Firefox, let’s look at the market 5 years from now, approximately the same time that has now passed since Firefox 1.0 was released. Ready?
In 2014, Firefox would have a market share of roughly 40% versus 37% for Internet Explorer, making Firefox the most popular browser. Also, 23% of the world will be using other browsers like Safari and Chrome, compared to only 11% in 2009.
Just 3 years from then, in 2017, Firefox would have finally attained just over 50% of the market, while 31% of surfers would be using alternatives like Safari and Chrome, and only 19% for Internet Explorer, making Internet Explorer second with close thirds, or third just behind Safari or Chrome, probably depending on how the Operating System market evolves.
In that close future, web market share is a much more even field and there’s a reason for everyone to keep on going with browsers that today may look like desperate efforts. However, niche browsers like Opera and Konqueror may never see the light at the end of the tunnel, blocked by bigger players like Apple and Google, which both already proved to be capable of making browsers more popular than Opera and Konqueror.
But this is merely speculations. Keep in mind Microsoft is still in the wake of Internet Explorer 6, still the number 3 used browser with 16% of market share. Most people who switch from Internet Explorer 6 do so to either Firefox or Internet Explorer 7 and now 8. Historically talking, Firefox took all of its market share from Internet Explorer 6 users who have never gone back. Internet Explorer users I know who have upgraded to version 7+ didn’t make the switch to Firefox and have no interest in doing so, so once the agglomeration of Internet Explorer 6 users is gone, I expect the market for Firefox to freeze a bit and other competitors to slow down considerably, especially with the hype of the imminent launch of Windows 7, which comes bundled with Internet Explorer 8 along with Windows 7 UI features only available on Internet Explorer 8 (for now). Those features are bound to make people switch. It did for me, I no longer use Chrome, then Firefox, on Windows because of the Windows 7 UI features in Internet Explorer 8 on the Windows 7 Release Candidate (and Beta).
Apple probably has no interest in making their browser function differently on Mac OS X than on Windows, Mozilla has yet to release version 4 and version 3.6, due only in 2010, contains no plan for Windows 7 UI integration, never mind Opera, Konqueror is still a pretty much Linux-only product, and Google might be the only one planning to grab on that UI feature but they should be more than busy at releasing Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux, leaving plenty of time for Microsoft to merge the remaining Internet Explorer 6 users onto Internet Explorer 8 with the help of Windows 7′s hype and in the meanwhile stop that bad market share tendency.
On yet another side note of this blog, Firefox is also covered in add-ons of all sorts, so WinFox will gladly enable you to use the visual tabs and jump list capabilities of Windows 7 with Firefox 3. Oh well… now all they have to do is embed the add-on.
In short, Microsoft is not stupid and remains a giant to wake. Giants can be slow at taking steps, but when they do, they usually cover longer distance. Truthfully, if the past is any indication, as Microsoft I’d be more worried about the two other giants, namely Google and Apple, than Mozilla. Also, don’t forget both Internet Explorer and Safari come bundled with an operating system, which is made by their respective makers, so as long as Microsoft and Apple remain leaders in the operating system market, their browser will flourish. This is also true for Linux, but the Linux community will go for whatever is open source and more popular, and Chrome is open source, so… In any cases, Microsoft and Apple will have to keep making their browsers competitive, as history has shown that simply relying on the operating system alone (Internet Explorer 6) isn’t enough.
Microsoft also has the enterprise/government market in hand, where large deployments are necessary and only possible with integrated solutions like Internet Explorer and Windows. Competitors have yet to offer deployment capabilities comparable to Microsoft’s, even on the Operating System front.
On a side-story, the government office of Canada I work at recently blocked access to Internet Explorer 8, leaving us stuck with Internet Explorer 6 or 7. My manager told me we were testing the site only with Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7. Talk about something different: the latest Internet Explorer version isn’t even supported by some government offices.
