There was a time when Microsoft could skimp on Internet Explorer innovation. Having trounced its Netscape rival, Microsoft rested on its IE laurels for years, barely updating the browser.
In part this is due to rising competition. The open-source Mozilla Firefox browser, for example, now tops 24 percent market share and it, along with the Google Chrome browser, and Apple's Safari browser, regularly push well beyond IE's comparatively glacial development.
However, the biggest challenge to Microsoft's IE development inertia is Microsoft itself. As Mozilla's Asa Dotzler posits:
That [IE] team has some really strong people and they're not going to let another release go by where they're still seen as badly trailing. Not with Office moving to the Web. Not with Search and other web services becoming huge revenue opportunities.
Falling short with IE 9 would be the last straw for Web developers' little remaining faith in Microsoft and so they won't miss this opportunity.
The browser used to be a sideshow to Microsoft's Windows and Office cash cows. In the future, however, the browser is the gateway to the next generation of Microsoft dominance...or irrelevance.
As the world moves online, how well Microsoft delivers an innovative browser experience will largely determine the future of the company.
At the same time, how well Mozilla delivers a neutral, innovative Firefox is the industry's best defense against Microsoft and Google too tightly coupling their browsers to their Web services.
It's therefore time for Facebook, IBM, Oracle, Salesforce, and others with a vested interest in an open gateway to an open Web to put their development resources where their mouths are. Contribute to Firefox. Microsoft (and Google) has an interest in building a better browser, yes, but to ensure that browser runs others' services as well as Microsoft's, Microsoft must be kept honest.
Firefox is the best way to accomplish this.
Mozilla isn't just about browsing anymore.
While the foundation made its name with the increasingly popular open-source Firefox browser, it is quickly moving beyond its roots, particularly in the area of e-mail. With the launch of Raindrop, its Google Wave-like unified messaging and collaboration system, as well as corporate uptake of Thunderbird, Mozilla may soon extend its reach well beyond its browser base.
Corporate America hasn't done much with Mozilla's Thunderbird, a competitor to Microsoft Outlook. Europe, however, has given it a warm reception. For example, the French tax authority recently selected Thunderbird to power 130,000 of its personal computers, replacing IBM Lotus Notes and Microsoft Outlook.
It's a massive deal for Mozilla, though in the grand scheme of things, it's still tiny. Even so, it's an indication that Mozilla's e-mail story is credible, and could lead to greater adoption of Thunderbird and, eventually, Raindrop.
Much of Firefox's early traction was in Europe. The same could hold true for Thunderbird and Raindrop.
The question for me, however, is how it gets funded. Google has essentially funded Mozilla's browser development for years. It's unclear who the "Google" is for Mozilla's messaging ambitions, or whether the foundation intends to sell subscriptions to use the software through its for-profit corporation.
Regardless, Mozilla's presence in the messaging market is welcome. While we already have an exceptional open-source competitor to Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Domino in Zimbra, given the importance of messaging and collaboration to enterprise computing, it's useful to have an open-source foundation involved, too. About the only organizations that won't like this increased competition are the proprietary incumbents.
Microsoft dominates enterprise IT and likely will for a long time. But the software giant is struggling to match the nimble pace of open source on the Web, a pace being set by Google and others.
As but one example, Microsoft's Internet Explorer lost market share to Mozilla Firefox in September. To compete effectively on the Web, Microsoft will have no choice but fight open-source fire with fire.
This isn't about a need to appease the proverbial "community." It's about broad-based development, low-cost distribution, and, frankly, revitalizing its brand with developers.
Google gets this. While Google has long embraced open source like Linux and MySQL to give it flexible, low-cost technology with which to scale out its operations, the company has dramatically increased its open-source developer outreach in the past two years. And while some companies dribble out open source at the edge of their operations, Google is releasing core software like Wave and Android for open-source communities to help develop and shape.
The result? A loud and loyal following. Google may not get much in the way of quality external contributions from these efforts (It's still too early to tell.) But the strategy is already paying for itself in terms of marketing, if nothing else.
Hence, while Microsoft's mobile software has stalled for years and recently dropped to 4 percent, according to CNET's report on recent AdMob data, Google Android jumped from 2 percent to 7 percent in just six months.
That's the power of community.
It's a community that Microsoft arguably has in the enterprise, but which it emphatically lacks on the Web. Facebook-style developers simply don't think of coding in Microsoft's .Net. They write LAMP applications. To match this, Microsoft is going to need to join the open-source party.
Microsoft is slowly getting the message. For example, the company has been optimizing Web technology like open-source PHP to run well on Windows. More interestingly, Microsoft's experimental Barrelfish multicore operating system has been released under a highly permissive BSD-style open-source license.
The use of a BSD-style license suggests Microsoft is serious about adoption of the project, and of generating trust with developers. Developers can take BSD-style code and do pretty much whatever they want with it, with no permission required and no oversight exercised by Microsoft. It's a great move.
Microsoft needs more of this.
The company recently saw its open-source chief leave Redmond for a Silicon Valley cloud start-up. Such movement, from Microsoft to cloud/Web-based computing, is well under way and something that Microsoft can only halt if it starts to play the same game as its competitors.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer seems to think the key to competition is features (in IE8 and elsewhere). It's not. That's just a start.
The key is encouraging and harnessing the power of community. Microsoft, which has done this so effectively in the enterprise, needs to learn to do this on the Web, too, which is tantamount to saying that Microsoft must fully embrace open-source development.
No, it needn't release all of its software as open source. Google certainly doesn't and, until recently, neither did the open-source bellwether, Red Hat.
But Microsoft needs to be doing much more to embrace, without extinguishing, open source. Open source is the key to making money on the Web, and last time I checked, Microsoft still liked money.
Open source is used to playing underdog to incumbent proprietary vendors. What will happen when open source dominates, rather than commoditizes, markets?
I ask because several open-source projects are not far from owning dominant market share in their respective markets. Mozilla's Asa Dotzler reports that Firefox is "on track to easily reach 25 percent of global usage by the end of the year." That may not sound like much, but given that Microsoft has been losing five percentage points of browser market share each year while Firefox gains five percentage points, and it's not hard to imagine Firefox surpassing IE's market share by early 2013.
Linux, for its part, is still only 13.8 percent of the paid server market, while Windows Server still claims 38.1 percent market share, according to IDC. It has a long way to go, but in some markets like cloud computing and the growing Web 2.0 market, it plays a more authoritative role.
So, what happens when these and other open-source projects dominate their respective markets? Will it change how we market open source? Will it mean more research and development dollars must be invested?
Traditionally, open source has done a fantastic job of commoditizing expensive, well-understood markets. While I believe open source can innovate, particularly with companies behind open-source projects, it's still an open question as to whether the financial returns from open-source sales can pay for the heavy R&D and marketing costs that are generally required to create new products and new markets.
Open source has been better at business-model innovation than product innovation, though there are some notable exceptions.
Forget innovation for a minute, however: what will we do when Microsoft, Oracle, etc. are the runners-up, not the market leaders? Microsoft is a convenient (if inaccurate) proxy for all things that are bad in the software world for open sourcerors, but imagine the shift in thinking required to compete when, for example, Firefox has 80 percent market share and IE owns less than 20 percent. Who will we blame for our problems when our straw men are gone?
Perhaps none of this matters, however, as we could see dominant community-led open-source projects fork themselves long before they reach critical, market-dominating mass. It's not hard to imagine splinter groups forming within big open-source projects to take them in different directions, even as Joomla did with Mambo, Ubuntu did with Debian, etc.
The antidote to this is the open-source foundation. Among the examples of strong open-source projects that haven't forked--Eclipse, Apache Web Server, Mozilla Firefox--foundations have been critical to keeping these together. Linux, for its part, has been forked many times, but its core is held together by the Linux Foundation.
I believe the key to attaining dominant market share, and to preventing forks, is the open-source foundation. Over time, I suspect we'll see more "open-source companies" separate themselves into foundations, to manage the code, and corporations, to manage the monetization. This may be the only way to both liberate and dominate at the same time.
If you're a Mac user with a need for speed, you'll struggle to find a better browser than Mozilla's Camino. Apple's Safari will win a drag race, but it lacks the customizability that comes with an open-source browser like Camino. Unfortunately, both Safari and Camino fall incredibly short against Firefox because both are heavy on speed and light on community.
For those who want a highly optimized, lightning fast browsing experience on the Mac, you can't do much better than Camino, as TechCrunch writes. But most of us want more than that. We want Adblock Plus to filter out ads from our browsing experience. We want Bitly Preview to be able to launch and track tweets from the browser. And more.
Sure, you can "PimpMyCamino," but you won't get nearly the level of detailing that comes with Firefox's impressive community. It's not hard, technically, to migrate from Firefox to Camino, but in the move you're going to end up losing most of the add-ons that make Firefox so powerful.
Camino has ad-blocking functionality built into the browser, and you can find an array of themes to dress it up. But really, the primary reason to use Camino is if you want raw speed. But if that's all you want, Safari is likely a better choice, given the somewhat limited customizations and add-ons available for Camino. Or Google Chrome, which hasn't fully launched on the Mac yet but promises a big speed boost once it does.
Browsing is about more than speed. Firefox delivers a global community with a diverse array of needs and solutions, which is why it remains my preferred browser, even as Camino sprints by, unadorned.
Mozilla's Firefox has maintained its steady ascent against Microsoft's Internet Explorer in the global browser market, hitting 22.98 percent vs. IE's 66.97 percent.
However, Sony has now given Google's Chrome browser something that Mozilla has struggled to obtain: a preinstall deal. As CNET reports, Google Chrome is being installed on Windows PCs alongside IE, with other distribution deals likely.
Finally, a clear choice for consumers.
Google Chrome still accounts for less than 3 percent of the global browser market, but it has something that even Firefox can't match: a dominant, global consumer brand. Google Chrome isn't interesting to Sony because of its market share in Web browsers, but rather because of its overall consumer brand coupled with steady innovation in browsers.
Intriguingly, this Chrome deal opens up the possibility that Sony, as well as other computer manufacturers, will eventually sign on to ship Google Chrome OS, Google's Netbook-optimized Linux operating system.
At the same time, this move may open the door for Mozilla to snag its own preinstall deal(s) with competitors to Sony, who will also likely want to buy into Google's brand but may prefer the Firefox option, given its wider adoption. Firefox users have been pressuring major hardware vendors to preinstall Firefox for years, but the best Mozilla has done is to get Firefox preinstalled with Linux-based notebooks and Netbooks.
That's hardly something to cheer about, given the small share of Linux in mobile personal computers.
This Google Chrome preinstall leaves an opening for Mozilla, but to capitalize on it Mozilla must improve its message. It has recently been claiming that we're hitting a "seat-belt moment" in which browser security could lead to consumers flocking to Firefox. But it's hard to get excited about browser security, no matter how important it is.
Much more interesting are Mozilla's plans to update its browser to 4.0 by the end of 2010 and to release Fennec, its mobile browser, before the end of 2009, according to TG Daily. Extending Firefox to my mobile device? That is something consumers can get excited about which, in turn, should stir up interest from hardware vendors that are looking to bridge their smartphone and laptop strategies.
Back to Sony. Its open-source credentials have been called into question due to its rootkit debacle and decision to restrict Linux on the PlayStation 3, but this new decision to preinstall Chrome should redeem it with the open-source community and give Sony a ready-made marketing machine.
The browser market, already competitive, just became even more so. Google is at the top of its game right now, but so is Mozilla. Microsoft, for its part, is reportedly holding meetings in D.C. that some Beltway insiders have dubbed as "screw Google" gatherings. But Microsoft probably should be spending more time developing innovative browser solutions to compete with Google and Mozilla.
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Some in the open-source camp would have you believe that open source is an all-or-nothing proposition. For such people, to believe that Linux makes for a superior server operating system is also to dedicate oneself to using open source for business applications, personal productivity, mobile, and likely brushing one's teeth. Open source on a proprietary platform like Mac OS X? Perish the thought!
But life is more complicated than that, and it turns out that there is exceptional open-source software for the Mac (or for Windows, for that matter).
The H Online has kicked off a nice "Open Source Stars for Mac OS X" series, one that I'd recommend all Mac users review. But for those who just want to know the best of the basics, here are my favorites:
- Firefox (Web browser) - Given Firefox's availability for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, this one won't be a surprise to anyone, but if you haven't used it lately, do give it a try. It continues to be the most feature-rich Web browser due to its large and variegated add-on community.
- Adium (instant messaging) - We will use Adium in heaven. Not only does it let me dress up my icon in an Arsenal uniform, but it manages all of my different instant messaging accounts (AIM, YIM, MSN, Skype, Facebook, Gtalk, and even Twitter/Identi.ca). It's like Trillian for Windows, only about one trillion times better.
- Zimbra (e-mail) - While geared toward enterprise-class messaging, you can use Zimbra (either the Web client or desktop or, in my case, both) for personal e-mail, as well. With the ability to extend its functionality through Zimlets and a Web user interface that continues to be best in class, Zimbra rocks.
- OpenOffice.org (office productivity) - I don't use this open-source alternative to Microsoft Office for word processing or spreadsheets, in part because I rarely use Word or Excel except for contracts and the occasional spreadsheet, two things with which I don't want to risk file format compatibility. But I actually prefer OpenOffice's presentation program to PowerPoint. It has some functionality that PowerPoint lacks.
- Handbrake (video converter/ripper) - I travel a lot and want my movies to travel with me, without having to carry DVDs around with me. So I rip them to my hard drive with Handbrake. It's a tremendously powerful (because it's so simple) program. It's now available on Linux and Windows, but it grew up on the Mac and is still best on OS X, in my opinion. Get it. It was created by angels.
- VLC (media player) - If it has a codec, VLC will play it. Heck, VLC will probably play it if the file even remotely resembles video or audio. It just works, and it works with everything.
- Audacity (audio editor) - Have a music file that you want to convert to a ringtone for your Blackberry? Or simply want to clean up that podcast before you publish it? Audacity is powerful and fairly easy to use.
- Seashore (image editor) - Seashore doesn't have nearly as many features as Adobe's Photoshop, but if you want a basic image editor with more-than-basic functionality, check out Seashore. Based on Gimp, Seashore is easy to use, though I do wish it had image transformations. I do so like making my pictures look even more cartoonish.
There you have it. That's the basic list of open-source applications I use on my Mac. I use them because they work, and in some cases work exceptionally well, far better than their proprietary equivalents.
This, incidentally, is also why I prefer the Mac. Life is too short to use a given application simply because it's open source (or Microsoft, or whatever). Use what works. Increasingly, this will lead you to use open source. But for me, the Mac is still the best desktop platform available, period. I'm therefore loving the combination of Mac OS X and a variety of open-source applications.
Maybe you will, too.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
If "only the paranoid survive," as former Intel CEO Andy Grove used to say, then Mozilla, the organization behind the open-source Firefox browser, needs to put its paranoia on overdrive.
That's the sense I got reading through Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady's billet-doux to Chromium, the open-source project behind the Google Chrome browser. O'Grady has long been friendly to Mozilla and a dedicated user of Firefox. When his head is turned by another browser, it's time for concern.
Yes, Firefox continues to grow its market share, now sitting comfortably at 22.47 percent, while Chrome is far behind at 2.59 percent. But O'Grady is an influencer (even if he has yet to persuade me to adopt the Linux "desktop"), and his reasons for preferring Chrome are important:
The open source version of Chrome is far from perfect; the recently enabled plugins which permit the usage of Flash and so on are regularly disabled and/or non-functional, the rendering engine still has its occasional issues, and too many poorly designed browser-sniffing sites give it a hard time. But it's just so damned fast. And speed is not just a feature, but a feature I prioritize.
Not in the rendering. Although its from-scratch V8 Javascript engine definitely gives sites like Google Docs a boost, I've found Firefox 3.5's counterpart, Tracemonkey, very competitive on most sites. But that's where the good news ends for Firefox.
In virtually every other sense, Chromium outperforms Firefox. Google's browser launches more quickly, features snappier tab creation and--perhaps most importantly--doesn't bog down after prolonged usage. And while the performance gains when measured might seem minute...they really add up over time.
As O'Grady notes, his observations apply to the Linux versions of Chrome and Firefox, but they still should give Mozilla pause.
In this little war, however, perhaps Microsoft is taking Firefox's side, at least against Google. As The Register reports, Microsoft Office Web Apps, due out in 2010, will support Firefox and other "familiar Web browsers," which doesn't include Chrome, Safari (for Windows), or Opera. Apparently, Microsoft will only be supporting those browsers that don't have an operating system competitor attached to them.
The browser market has become hugely competitive and, as a result, more innovative and much more interesting. I'm confident the Mozilla team will respond to Chrome's apparent speed advantages, but equally confident that Google, Apple, and Microsoft will work just as hard to outflank Mozilla and the other browser competitors in other ways.
All of which is good for you and for me as we enjoy the results of the competition. Now if we could just get this level of competition in all areas of software.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Net Applications has finally published its browser market share numbers for July, and the results are surprising. Given European summer holidays and Mozilla Firefox's large user base in Europe (35 percent market share), Firefox should be seeing a significant decline in market share through the summer months.
But it isn't.
Instead, as detailed below, Firefox market share continues to hold steady at 22.47 percent, while Internet Explorer also treads water at 67.68 percent. Only Safari (4.07 percent) and Google Chrome (2.59 percent) show appreciable, sustained growth over the past few months.
Browser Market Share Data, July 2009
(Credit: Net Applications)With Firefox recently surpassing its one-billionth download, we should see rising market share in the fall, unless back-to-school PC sales give IE a bump.
But I don't think IE will win over the student crowd, which is more likely to be a Mac (Safari) crowd than a Microsoft one. And so I suspect we'll continue to see Firefox (along with Safari and Chrome) rising against IE.
After all, eventually even the Griswalds come home and get back to work. When they do, more and more will be using Firefox.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
It's a good thing that Mozilla is profitable, because the open-source foundation would likely struggle to get venture funding.
For any Sand Hill venture capitalist, Mozilla fails to tick any of the correct boxes. While it does have a world-class development organization, Mozilla also relies on an external, unpaid workforce to contribute up to 40 percent of its code. Also, 88 percent of its revenues come from one source, Google, which also happens to be a competitor.
Speaking of competitors, it has three big ones--gargantuan ones. Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Tell a VC that you want to go up against one of these and you're likely to be turned away. Tell them you want to take on all three and, well, they might just make a full-on sprint for the safety of their Aston Martins.
And yet, Mozilla may be superbly positioned to compete with these big competitors precisely because it isn't anything like them: at its core, Mozilla is a nonprofit foundation that wants to save the world more than it wants to make a buck.
The New York Times highlights Mozilla's challenges in a searching review, but it falls just short of highlighting the fact that Mozilla's success derives from its unique mission, which encourages broad development and adoption, and is a direct byproduct of its nonprofit structure.
Because it is a nonprofit, Mozilla can lobby governments differently, and it has. Because it is a nonprofit, Mozilla can focus on delivering an unparalleled user experience, not on figuring out how to monetize the Web, hardware, etc.
Because it is a nonprofit, Mozilla can be truly disruptive in a way that its competitors cannot.
I'm sure there's not a day that goes by that John Lilly, Mitchell Baker, and the other Mozilla executives and employees don't wish that they had the resources their biggest competitors do. I'm equally sure there's not a day that goes by that they don't benefit from the decisions their resource constraints force upon them.
Firefox is as good as it is because of all that Mozilla has...and has not.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
