Seattle Times reporter Todd Bishop’s recent conversation with Firefox project co-founder Blake Ross demonstrates Ross possesses a level of maturity well beyond his 21 years. His comments on the future of Firefox, thoughts on Internet Explorer 7, and startup aspirations are fascinating, and well-worth the read.
This interview, coupled with my own experiences using the IE 7 beta over the past few months, has left me wondering what MSFT has really gained as a result of winning the browser wars of the 90’s. It seems to me the answer is really nothing at all, and in fact one could argue its decision to enter the browser market at all was a huge mistake.
The decision to tightly integrate IE into Windows has not only resulted in a tidal wave of embarrassing security exploits, only further focusing the magnifying glass on the company’s already spotty record in these regards. BTW, don’t take this comment as an attack on MSFT’s developers; I know several of them and even had the honor of being invited to the campus a few months ago for the MSFT Technology Summit, which fellow attendee Reg Cheramy summarized quite nicely. These guys are brilliant; but I’d imagine most would attest that attempting to tightly integrate a piece of outward facing software with the largest code base in the history of mankind was an exercise in madness. And let’s not forget those antitrust cases...
A product which has been freely available since 1995, not a single penny has been made from direct sales of the software beyond version 1.0, which was bundled with “Microsoft Plus! For Windows 95”. Since then, the product has been made freely available, a remnant of the company’s overt (and successful) attempt to destroy Netscape who had been making the majority of its revenues from sales of their flagship browser. After devoting considerable resources to dominating the browser market, MSFT inexplicably deprioritized development, and IE releases subsequently practically ground to a halt. Perhaps the company presumed nobody would dare challenge the product’s dominance, not only as a general browser but also as an unofficially required client for products such as OWA and Sharepoint.
Of course, the unexpected success of Firefox threw a wrench into the situation, and with most surveys indicating Firefox continues to take marketshare away from IE (10% last time I checked), MSFT was forced to innovate, something it hadn’t done in the browser market for five years (IE 6 was released in 2001). The result is a browser which is somewhat more Firefox-like, but otherwise has very little to offer. Apparently the craze surrounding Firefox extensions were lost on the IE team, as there remains no simple means for customizing the browser beyond trivialities such as determining whether the standard menu bar should be present.
So what is it MSFT has actually gained from IE, and what does it stand to gain from it’s recent release of IE 7? The answer is unclear. If the company’s aspirations for MSN are any indication, it’s apparent browser lock-in is no longer an option. The same is true for its long-term goals to move the entire operating system online, as Live.com seems to work quite well with Firefox.
With nothing seemingly gained in retrospect, and nothing to gain moving forward, one must wonder why MSFT ever bothered with the upgrade.
Links
» Seattle Times Interview
» Firefox Home Page
» Internet Explorer 7 Home Page
» MSFT’s Historical Recounting of IE
» Wikipedia Historical Recounting of IE
