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Technically the browser "market" is not a market, because browsers are for free. That's very unusual. Hence whoever invests most in its development + distribut
by cmarschner 11y ago
Technically the browser "market" is not a market, because browsers are for free. That's very unusual.
Hence whoever invests most in its development + distribution can gain market share. Similar to Android, Chrome is strategically important for Google to keep users in their ecosystem, so it makes sense for them to overinvest. It's just a loss leader paid for by advertising dollars. Also distribution is cheap for them through google.com.
Microsoft has kept IE in the Windows org, and for the longest time did not invest enough to pay down technical debt. For the longest time investments couldn't be justified with advertisement dollars, so after they "won" the browser war with Netscape's demise they cut down much of the IE team.
Firefox devs paid down Netscape's technical debt for free to escape the IE monopoly. But distribution is a problem for them since they neither own the desktop OS nor the web's primary entry point.
- iopq 11y ago> It's just a loss leader I think having Google bundled makes it a clear winner. If Firefox can pay its developers with just the search engine bundle, and it's less popular, it would probably stand to reason that Chrome has paid off much more. In a world where Firefox is the #1 alternative to IE and Chrome has very weak showing Firefox either asks Google for a ton more money or switches to Yahoo and Google loses a lot more market share.
- kami8845 11y agoIt's still a market if every product is free. And they're not even really free, you pay with potential advertising revenue, vendor lock-in and with data that you generate.
- cmarschner 11y agoWell they are just as much of a product as free parking is for a convenience store. The browser is not the product. You are the product, sold to advertisers.