The Open Road

Once a monopolist, always a monopolist? Not in Microsoft's case. While no one will accuse Microsoft of being a forlorn Tiny Tim, it's also no longer the Ebeneezer Scrooge that it once was. In fact, Microsoft seems haunted by the ghost of monopolies past, to the point that it has lost its ability to fight on equal terms for new markets.

Look at the markets the U.S. government sought to open by suing Microsoft for monopolistic practices. Microsoft's market share in media players, Windows, etc. remains largely unaffected by the government lawsuits.

Where Microsoft has lost market share (as in Web browsers and mobile), the competition hasn't relied on consent decrees and the like to win. Firefox wins because of its community development and distribution. Apple's iPhone and Google Android are trouncing Windows Mobile because they significantly change the rules of engagement for mobile while providing a better experience.

Government, in other words, probably solved little. But what it did was create a culture of caution within Microsoft that stultifies its ability and desire to compete. (We should note that just today, the European Commission formally ended its browser-focused antitrust pursuit of Microsoft, following concessions by Redmond.)

Microsoft's competitors, like Google, thrive in the wake of this fear, uncertainty, and doubt that plagues Microsoft. Ironically, competitors like Google do many of the same things that got Microsoft into hot water with the U.S. Justice Department.

Google et al. are free to compete. Microsoft is not.

Granted, this constricted freedom may be more psychological than real. As a journalist friend said to me on Tuesday, "Everybody thought Microsoft laughed off the antitrust thing. But I think it really did take the wind out of their competitive sails."

I do, too. In fact, a few years ago a friend and I set out to start a business delivering Microsoft Office-like functionality to mobile phones, which we ultimately abandoned. We didn't worry about Microsoft suing us for patent or copyright infringement. My friend had successfully sued Microsoft for anticompetitive practices in the Caldera litigation. We knew Microsoft's hands were tied by its antitrust settlement.

Microsoft is not the same company it once was. It's under siege, and seemingly incapable of responding. I think we're the poorer for it.

No, this isn't a paean to Microsoft monopolies. Rather, it's a plea for a Microsoft that competes vigorously to win.

Not one that repents in sackcloth and ashes for the "sin" of competing with open source. Not one that is continuously constrained by various antitrust authorities even as it erodes market share for the products in question.

I don't want a monopoly. I understand the important competitive principles that Mozilla and others are fighting for in the ongoing browser/etc. wars.

But I want a competitor again. Microsoft has lost its fight. This should concern us.

It should bother us because companies like Google need to be kept on their toes. It should nag at us because Microsoft writes great software that is comparatively easy to use, and we need its influence on the market.

I hardly use Microsoft software, preferring Apple and Google and open source. But I'd still like Microsoft's influence on the market, and not as a milquetoast competitor too afraid of antitrust shadows to thrash a competitor. Man up, Microsoft.

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.

Today, Microsoft can't afford to rest on any laurels, least of all with IE.

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.

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.

It was announced Monday that smartphone maker Research in Motion had acquired Torch Mobile, a provider of browsers and other applications based on the open-source WebKit project. Though Webkit has become the unofficial standard for mobile browsers, as Don Reisinger reports, it seems to be a largely Apple-controlled open-source community, one that has the potential to leave RIM, Palm, Google, and other WebKit users constantly playing catch-up to Apple.

Is WebKit open source? Absolutely. But is it truly an open, level playing field for RIM and other would-be competitors to Apple? Likely not.

Yes, there are other developers from Nokia, Torch Mobile, and Google involved with the project, but Apple controls the project, if by no other means than sheer numbers. Apple employs the majority of WebKit developers (30), with Google coming in second (19). Torch Mobile? It employs just eight of the WebKit development team members.

More pertinently, Apple employs far more of the WebKit reviewers than anyone else, which gives it much more control. Most of the other participants are committers, which are important but not equal in control to reviewers.

I've even heard that WebKit is not accepting outside contributions at present, though I have not yet been able to verify this.

Not that you need to look too deeply to see Apple's grip on the project. Just look at the logo:

Look familiar? It should. Here's Apple's logo for its Safari browser, which is based on the WebKit project:

Coincidence? Um...no. After all, the WebKit blog is called (get this): "Surfin' Safari. Think the blog is going to change its name anytime soon to "Surfin' RIM"? Don't hold your breath.

As the proud owner of four MacBook Pros and three iPhones, I'm not bashing Apple. I love what it produces.

But if part of RIM's interest in Torch Mobile was influence in the WebKit project, it could have saved its money. WebKit, for better or worse, is largely an Apple project, with serious support from Google. For everyone else, WebKit may be the best game in town, but it's Apple's town. It almost certainly will result in a better Blackberry browser for RIM customers, but not one that RIM has as much control over as it would like.

There are some technologies that make less and less sense as proprietary software. The browser is one of them. With Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome actively gaining at Internet Explorer's expense on the "desktop," it would be nice to see a truly open-source project--open in source, and open to outside involvement--standardize the mobile browsing experience, too.

There's Mozilla's Fennec, of course, but its development has been slow. WebKit may be the best option for RIM and others, but it would be an even better option if Apple took its hands off the wheel to open up the project further.

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.

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.

Microsoft may be its own toughest competitor. As noted by Mozilla's Asa Dotzler, Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 8 browser is taking the browser market by storm...so long as you define "browser market" as "Internet Explorer 7." Mozilla's Firefox 3.5 browser, at 30 million downloads and counting, isn't being affected by IE 8's uptake. But then, neither is IE 6.

It's only IE 7 that is getting squeezed by IE 8. And you thought they were friends...

Here's the data on IE market share:

This suggests that Firefox, with roughly 22 percent of browser market share, is the second-most widely used browser on the planet. Not bad when you consider the previous state of affairs when Firefox 1.0 was launched, as Dotzler does:

Back then IE 6 was the most popular browser with almost 85% of Web usage followed by older IE versions accounting for another 10 points of share, and with all other vendors' browsers accounting for only 5% of usage.

In other words, we have real competition again, competition that sees an open-source upstart seriously challenge Microsoft for first place in browser usage. Mozilla has accomplished this by making Firefox easy to use, easy to contribute to (which keeps getting easier, as Glyn Moody reports), and powerful through a large and growing community.

Importantly, Mozilla has had to fight for every user. Unlike IE, Firefox isn't pre-installed with Windows. That "30 million" number I cited above? That's not even due to an auto-update feature, which Mozilla has yet to turn on. Once that happens, Firefox 3.5's impressive download numbers should soar.

Perhaps Microsoft should stop competing with itself and start competing with Firefox...?

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer's market share is absolutely falling. The question is, by how much?

I've reported before that Internet Explorer (IE) drops 5 percent market share points each year, while Mozilla Firefox gains 5 percentage points per year. But what is becoming increasingly clear is that IE's market share may be dropping more precipitously than previously reported, falling to 60 percent share in June 2009 instead of the 68 percent share expected.

Or is it?

The answer may depend on the source of the information, and the reliability of its data. Mozilla's Asa Dotzler uses StatCounter data to discern a 60 percent share for IE but, as ZDNet's Larry Dignan points out, this data may not hold up.

For Microsoft's sake, it had better hope not, as this chart compiled by Dotzler shows:

That's not the sort of chart with which Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer likes to sweeten his coffee in the morning.

Net Applications, the other big source of browser market share data, still hasn't posted its results for June 2009, noting that it is trying to make sense of "some significant variations in browser and operating system statistics."

Given that market share data isn't a one-month phenomenon, it's not necessarily helpful to celebrate or fret over the June data, especially since much of the market share share data is going to get skewed in the summer months, anyway. For example, given Firefox's disproportionately large following in Europe, coupled with Europe's disproportionately long holiday season in the summer, I'd expect to see Firefox drop some percentage points against IE through August, only to rebound strongly in September.

Regardless of short-term variations, one thing seems clear: Firefox is gaining on IE. Microsoft spent too long enjoying its browser dominance, and not enough time innovating. It's starting to pump R&D dollars into IE again, but it's not yet clear whether its monolithic approach to browser development can compete in the long term with Mozilla's community-developed Firefox.

Microsoft needs to compete again, or risks seeing even StatCounter's data understate just how quickly it's falling.

Mozilla, for its part, faces a host of new challenges. It can't afford to waste much time with back slaps and high-fives. The browser has become the center of computing. Microsoft isn't going to give up easily, nor will Google or Apple.

Game on.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

As I type this, Firefox 3.5 is blazing past 5.6 million downloads, having been released just a day and a half ago. While such uptake for Mozilla's upgraded browser is impressive, the bigger story is how Firefox 3.5 is upgrading the Web with its extensive support for HTML 5. Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) 8 has brought the company's browser back into the 21st century, but its sluggish (and perhaps perverse) response to emerging Web standards threatens to leave it in Web 1.0 Blunderland.

ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley wonders if the departure of Bill Gates has taken some of the bite out of Microsoft, and she may be on to something. Regardless, Microsoft needs to quickly execute to outflank Firefox or it threatens to let Mozilla, not Microsoft, define the Web, as Slate implies:

The best thing about the new Firefox is that it gives us a peek at the Internet of tomorrow...Firefox 3.5 offers the best implementation of the (HTML 5) standard--and because it's the second-most-popular Web browser in the world, the new release is sure to prompt Web designers to create pages tailored to the Web's new language. In other words, Firefox isn't just an upgrade for your computer; it could well prompt a re-engineering of the Web itself.

But it's not just HTML 5. Firefox is innovating in a number of other areas, including "location-aware browsing" on the "desktop," while Mozilla's Weave is experimenting with new ways to enrich identity in the browser. In tandem, Mozilla's team is also actively working on improving the online video experience.

And that's just this week.

It took Microsoft two-and-a-half years to move from IE7 to IE8, while five years passed before the company updated IE6 with IE7. The company seems to be moving faster on browser development now, but is it fast enough to keep up with Mozilla, not to mention Apple (Safari) and Google (Chrome)?

It won't be enough for Microsoft to borrow features from Mozilla's Firefox. Microsoft needs to innovate again, and not simply in its marketing department.

Also, it would be nice if IE were available for more than Windows. Mozilla is available on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, and it doesn't seem to slow its development pace down. Perhaps Microsoft should stop trying to protect Windows at the expense of losing the Web?

Of course, Mozilla, too, faces a host of competitive issues, as CNET describes. But Mozilla has never been shy about innovating. It exists to improve the Web, and understands that a competitive browser market does that...even if Firefox sometimes has to play catch up.

For today, however, the field is Mozilla's to lose.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.