Wishful thinking? Perhaps so in the scale of what's actually likely, but things are certainly changing right now in browser land.

The first Internet browser war was fought and won by Microsoft back in the late 1990s. In 1997 the king of the browser hill was still Netscape Navigator, with a market share estimated at over 70%. However, the Microsoft tactic of bundling its Internet Explorer (IE) browser with the successive releases of the Windows operating system (OS), and a very aggressive commercial strategy (which was sometimes legally challenged), altered the browser landscape dramatically, and seemingly forever. It's also fair to say that, beginning with IE V.4, some experts (reluctantly) acknowledge that the Microsoft browser had started to outperform its Netscape rival.

But either way, by early 1999 Netscape's share of the browser market was down to 60%, and falling. And so it continued. By mid-2004 the IE share of the global business was in excess of 95%. The earlier US$4.21bn purchase of Netscape by America OnLine (AOL) did little to revive the fortunes of Navigator.

End of story, or so it seemed. Except that in the ICT industry, there are actually very few 'forevers' and 'end-of-story' deals*.

Slip sliding away…
Microsoft's share of the browser market is now judged to be slipping, albeit in old style glacial increments. By mid-2004 observers were reporting (some with glee) that IE's market share had declined a whole percentage point down to 94.something%. While this is hardly the end of the world for IE, some experts interpret this as a meaningful trend. More recently, the cunningly named US Internet analysis company WebSideStory found that IE's browser usage share had fallen to 91.8% as of 03 December 2004. For this research WebSiteStory's sample size consisted of more than 30mn daily Internet users from more than 200 countries.

Three main factors seem to influencing the downward movement of IE.

In recent months there have been some well-aired concerns about the security of the Microsoft product. One often cited document is Vulnerability Note VU#713878 issued in June 2004 by the US Homeland Security Department's Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT). This mentioned 'significant vulnerabilities' in IE, and suggested that one solution was for people to use a different web browser. It should be noted, however, that this was only one of the possible solutions and that other browsers have also been the subject of this organisation's Vulnerability Notes.

No longer top of the class
Second, there is some consensus that the current version of IE is no longer best in class. According to The Radicati Group Inc, this may be due in part to the massive market hegemony enjoyed by IE. The December 2004 edition of the market research company's 'Messaging Technology Report' observes: "Since 1998, IE has enjoyed almost 100% of the market and very little competition. Unfortunately, the lack of competition has led to a lack of innovation on Microsoft’s part…" The report also notes: "Microsoft hasn’t released a new version of IE since 2001".

The next version of IE - V.7 - may also be a while in the delivery, with current betting being on 2006 as an accompaniment to the new Microsoft Longhorn OS.

Third, and related to the second, rival browsers are outperforming IE. The Radicati 'Messaging Technology Report' states: "Browser alternatives, like Firefox, Netscape, Opera, and Maxthon are all functionally superior".

Different browser developers point up some different aspects of their own product's claimed superiority.

Here's part of the pitch for Opera:

• Opera has proved itself faster than the competition in magazine tests for home users. Opera is significantly faster on computers with lower modem speeds and weaker system resources.

The newest version of Opera - released last December - also features voice technology, and supports applications such as voice-enabled shopping, Web browsing using spoken commands, and Web page content reading.

Here's part of the pitch for Maxthon:

• It is based on the Internet Explorer browser engine (your most likely current web browser) which means that what works in the IE browser will work the same in Maxthon tabbed browser but with many additional efficient features.

These features include: tabbed browsing interface, mouse gestures, super drag and drop, privacy protection, AD hunter, Google bar support, external utility bar, and skinning.

And here's part of the pitch for Mozilla Firefox 1.0:

• Firefox 1.0 empowers you to browse faster, more safely and more efficiently than with any other browser.

Features for this browser include: pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, integral privacy and security tools, smart searching, live bookmarks, downloads automatically saved to desktop for ease of location, and a high degree of customisation.

Open-minded
What really also distinguishes most of the alternate browsers from IE is that they emphasise the use of open rather than proprietary standards. Interestingly the open source Mozilla project, which Netscape helped launch in 1998 by turning over its source code, is shaping up to be one of the candidates 'most likely' to make a serious dent in Microsoft's browser fiefdom.

Last year, Firefox was the subject of 10mn downloads in its first month of availability. In the 2004 WebSiteStory survey referenced above, for the one month period from 05 November to 03 December, while IE's share of the action declined Firefox’s online usage grew by more than one third, from 3.03% to 4.06% of total all-browser usage. This compared to a gain of 13% during the previous month. "Firefox’s gains are clearly accelerating", said Rand Schulman, WebSideStory’s chief marketing officer. "Much of it has to do with the release of Firefox’s version 1.0 on November 9, after several months of offering a preview version. Firefox’s stated goal of gaining 10% of the market over the next year no longer seems unattainable".

Which is to say nothing of what Netscape, Opera, Maxthon and other browsers might achieve.
John Williamson