Browser Wars??? This isn’t even a skirmish. (from: Michael Gartenberg)
http://weblogs.jupiterresearch.com/analysts/gartenberg/archives/006541.html
My colleague David Card thinks this isn’t about Firefox but rather Google or Yahoo. Perhaps, but I don’t think so. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a Google browser floating out there somewhere but so what? What does Google or Yahoo get out of it? Paid search? They already get that from the toolbar and their own desktop search and they have done a pretty good job co-opting IE for that purpose.
Understand that Microsoft responds to things in different ways, things that are just market responses that are tactical and immediate strategic initiatives. IE’s response to Netscape was strategic. This announcement is a pure tactical response that creates a lot of FUD and will slow down Firefox adoption among the places that Microsoft really cares about, namely the enterprise. Lots of folks have already urged caution for business users to think twice about Firefox (myself included). This adds further fuel to the fire. At the end of the day, announcing now for a beta sometime this “summer” with no comment about features or fixes is just good old fashioned FUD, regardless of who you think the target of the FUD is. The other side of this is the breakout from Longhorn, not surprising since that project seems so confused at this point, it’s no shocker MSFT doesn’t want to wait.
So Mister Softee(search on IE 7) is back in the browserbusiness. But as my colleague Joe Wilcox points out, contrary to some reports, there is no operating system/browser divorce.
Make no mistake though, this move ain’t about Firefox. Well not much. Rather, it’s an attempted preemptive strike at Google and, maybe, Yahoo. (And AOL, of course.) It’s about sticky apps that blend in desktop search and link to preferred search engines. Personally, I’m not sold on integrating desktop search with Web search for consumers, but that doesn’t matter. The competitors all are.