WebSideStory has released a report stating that the Mozilla foundation’s browsers have taken another bite out of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, that now accounts for just under a 3% drop in only months. It doesn’t sound like much until you consider just how many browser installs it accounts for. (we are speaking of many millions here.)
It is likely to cause Microsoft to rethink it’s policy of no new Internet Explorer versions that don’t come with a new version of Windows. I expect Microsoft initially thought that they could use a new version of Internet Explorer as another way to lure people to buy newer versions of Windows, and I don’t imagine they were expecting browsers as good as Firefox to show up at the crucial stage. After all, why would you pay hundreds of dollars to buy a new version of Windows to get a better browser, when you can get a much better browser right now for free?
I’m going to make a prediction, and that prediction is that Microsoft will pull a John Kerry (a flip-flop) and release Internet Explorer 7 sometime before Longhorn comes out. If they wait until the end of 2006 to update their web browser, they will likely have lost allot more then 3% of market share. After all Internet Explorer 6 is already about 4 years old, and in the software world that’s positively archaic. By the time Longhorn is released, IE6 will be at least 6 years old. The point to remember here, is that they didn’t update it, because they had no real competition for most of that 4 years, so why should they bother? (That is my way of pointing out that competition is a great way of making sure that huge companies like Microsoft offer value for money. They go on a lot about innovation, but unless they get real serious competition, they are apparently quiet happy to stop development and wait until they do. So regardless of what they would have you believe, they are not in this to help the customer, only to take his/her money.)
The WebSideStory story has been covered by TheInquirer and Eweek.
Franki
