The Web browser wars may have been reignited, according to browser pioneer Marc Andreessen.
This time, it's not Andreessen's former company Netscape Communications that's taking on Microsoft's Internet Explorer; it's the emerging popularity of smaller products such as Apple Computer's Safari and open-source browser Firefox, Andreessen said.
"It may turn out that there's a one-two punch with Firefox and Safari," Andreessen said on Wednesday at the Web 2.0 conference in San Franciso. "Microsoft is certainly going to respond competitively."
Firefox owes more than a debt of gratitude to Netscape. The company created and funded the open-source Mozilla project that created it, although Mozilla was later spun off as an independent group.
Claiming browser development has been at a standstill since 1998, Andreessen said the recent emergence of competitive software will force Microsoft to pay more attention to developing new features in IE.
However, competition could compel the company to use aggressive tactics to protect its Windows operating system monopoly, he warned. Microsoft's manoeuvres against Netscape ensnared the software giant in a lengthy federal antitrust suit. Microsoft was found to have violated antitrust law, but was spared from a break-up of the company.
Andreessen said he doesn't expect Microsoft to change its way of doing things should it detect a threat from Safari and Firefox.
"If I were [Microsoft] I'd take another look, and I would see how I could screw with other people's businesses with this monopoly [I] have," he said.
Talkback
Dear Sir:
I am a Mac lover and use Windows XP on a laptop. Thank goodness for Mozilla and Firefox because Internet Explorer is old, creaky, leaky with viruses and have seen no innovation in the past several years. It is true that Microsoft's monopoly was having a negative effect on the development of browsers. Redmond's strategy is to dominate the market, get all the suckers using their products and do nothing but take their money for inferior products they produce thereafter.
New features??!
Crap! instead of new features, we need a browser that conforms to standards. New features will just mean more proprietary crap that only IE will render.
By the way, how is Safari a "punch" to Redmond. MS cut development of IE for the Mac on their own accord. I suppose you could say they punched themselves?
I am surprised at a former Netscape person advocating Microsoft's tactic's rather than deprecating them.
Mark's right. There wasn't much new in the browser world until Apple ditched Internet Explorer in favor of Safari. Now Firefox has become a very good, cross platform browser. This article shows still other choices...
http://www.mac360.com/index.php/mac360/more/why_i_dumped_safari_and_firefox_the_new_best_mac_browser/
Not only is Camino very good, the latest version of OmniWeb is superb; fast, heavy use of nifty features. This new wave of "browser mania" comes from Apple/Mac user innovation, and Microsoft's stagnant MSIE.
"By the way, how is Safari a "punch" to Redmond."
It is the current exemplar for browsers and may well encourage people away from Windows and other Microsoft products.
In improving the KHTML codebase, Apple have shown support for Open Source and given Linux a helping hand, again, not good for Microsoft.
You'd think that this was a prima-facie case that Microsoft will either react with its corporate might or resign its browser to the recycle bin.
There's no compelling evidence to say that these developers won't sell out to Microsoft in the long-run. Two-for-one stock buybacks and a hardline tech market will see Microsoft enter this market through the back door, by buying out the best, like it did with Microsoft Office.
Undeniably insecure and unreliable, it still outclasses its rivals in group testing, and is still the defacto standard. Ideals are neglected in times of corporate uncertainty.
Or consider its developer tools.
For many years Visual Studio was classed as inferior to the Borland family of tools; with later releases, we see a new way of developing being enforced upon developers (.NET) - the result: a much more stable and co-herent release.
What we're seeing from Microsoft at the moment is a progressive, secure program (with Windows XP SP 2) that has removed the bells-and-whistles approach in favour of a much more secure environment.
Either way, Microsoft will put paid to posturing and big ideals about a 'war' and a showdown. The gun fight will be fought in the boardrooms with checks and handshakes.
As a Mac user, I've tried every single release of each browser as they've come out, and unfortunately, for several different "must access" websites (many that real estate agents in my neck of the woods have to use), only MSIE 6 and above for Windows works. There are problems with Javascript and Windows-only plug-ins that make Mac users second-class (or worse) web citizens. I rarely see this brought up when I read reviews of the Mac or browsers.
I don't think IE is in immediate danger. 95%+ of users to my website use IE6 or other versions of IE. I personally use IE and prefer its streamlined appearance which is a lot more customisable than a lot of people credit it. I don't like or want tabbed browsing but if others do then I'm sure Microsoft will include this as optional in a future release. I also think IE is very secure if you set its settings correctly. IE is the most attacked browser because it is the most commonly used and it is patched regularly which is all you can ask. I believe firefox has had a significant number of fixes and patches and security updates since release and probably more proportionately to IE.
"IE is the most attacked browser because it is the most commonly used and it is patched regularly which is all you can ask."
IE is attacked most because it is so deeply embedded into Windows that it is the easiest way to own a Windows box. Also, features such as ActiveX are just asking for trouble.
What we should be asking of MS is to put IE in a proper sandbox and not have it be so deeply entwined into Windows that it is virtually impossible to use it without all sort sof rubbish ending up on your PC. Patches do not fix the fundamental bad design. That design only came about as a means of shutting out every other browser. They certainly didn't do it for your good and it hasn't done Windows any favours at all in terms of security.
"I believe firefox has had a significant number of fixes and patches and security updates since release and probably more proportionately to IE."
IE fixes tend to be bundled. Each time there is a patch it covers a whole bunch of vulnerabilities. They also have a policy of not announcing flaws until after they are patched and many flaws go unpatched for years and cause significant problems. The Mozilla Firefox developers have put out patches, lots of them, but they are generally done before they have ever been abused and they don't wait until they have a few dozen to roll into a patch, they'll fix it as soon as possible. Some of these patches only exist on Windows too because the Mozilla developers find flaws in the underlying OS that they have to deal with (the shell:// flaw for example).
I find it extremely encouraging that updates to Firefox happen at the pace they do. Certainly when I use Windows I only run Firefox. My wife's grandmother was having a nightmare with her machine and was always asking for help until I hid IE and Outlook Express and replaced them with Firefox and Thunderbird. Since then the system simply works and all the spyware her machine will filled with has also been removed and futher infections are blocked by search & destroy too. Windows can be made a pretty secure OS by modern standards, even pre XP versions, but you must make sure you don't use IE, especially now that MS is refusing to incorporate the XP2 updates into any previous versions of Windows. The popup blocking in Firefox works well, and the adblock extension makes web browsing much more pleasant. All these people who say IE is just fine for them really should take a look at Firefox with adblock installed. You may still have to use IE for some sites, there is even a Firefox extension that allows you to open the same page in IE if it doesn't render properly, but the vast majority of the web these days works perfectly in firefox and many times better than in IE (CSS and PNG being the major reasons).
Oh, for the record I have Windows, Linux and Mac systems and I run Firefox on all of them. While Safari is OK, it isn't as good as Firefox although it is a fairy close call. On the other platforms there is simply no competition, Firefox wins hands down.