RSSMicrosoft should dig into the WebKit to stop Google from framing IE
By Joe Wilcox | Published September 23, 2009, 3:30 PM
Internet Explorer is in a state of crisis so severe that Microsoft may yet lose most of the browser market territory claimed during the browser wars. Microsoft has no choice but to make a leap of development faith, by abandoning the IE rendering engine and releasing new WebKit-based desktop and mobile browsers. IE is a dead platform. It's long past time for Microsoft to end its "Weekend at Ernie's" behavior.
What a difference a decade makes. Ten years ago, Microsoft won the browser wars with Netscape, only to abandon the territory after Internet Explorer 6 launched. Many end users are still stuck in the IE 6 past, whether it's the browser directly or progeny Internet Explorer 7 or 8. According to Net Applications, IE 6 usage share is higher than either of the newer versions. Perhaps IE's market position would be better had Microsoft not let browser development lay idle until after Mozilla started working on Firefox about six years ago. AOL and Mozilla reignited browser development because of paid search -- that Google box -- as did several other software developers. AOL eventually gave up on Netscape, but Apple, Mozilla and Opera continued developing browsers.
Google entered the market just a year ago and already has released three versions of browser Chrome. The speed of Chrome development is eerily familiar. Microsoft rat-tat-tat released new browser versions in 1996 and 1997, going from IE 2 to IE 4. Through IE 6, Microsoft released new versions every year. In the new browser wars, Google is to Microsoft as Microsoft was to Netscape in the late 1990s. Microsoft fought to protect its Windows platform. Similarly, Google is fighting to protect its search and informational platform. If will determines winners, Google has got it over Microsoft.
Framing IE for Posterity
Matters bad are worse, with Google's Chrome Frame announcement and Microsoft's weak position in the mobile browser market, where WebKit-based Chrome and Safari rapidly gain users. Chrome Frame, which has just entered beta, is an Internet Explorer plug-in supporting HTML and JavaScript, among other technologies or tags. Google is trying to redefine Internet Explorer on terms that suit its product and platform objectives. It's Google's most ambitious drive into Microsoft controlled territory ever, even more than desktop search, Exchange email sync or toolbar products/services.
For Microsoft, Chrome Frame and forthcoming Google Wave are a looming crisis of IE's character, as expressed in end-user features and the browser's appeal -- or lack thereof -- to developers. By Framing Internet Explorer, Google seizes control of the end user experience away from Microsoft. If Google can succeed widely distributing Frame, the easy step is next: Moving those same users to Chrome.
Chrome browser usage share doesn't seem like much -- 2.84 percent -- according to Net Applications. But that's up from zero a year ago. Meanwhile, Internet Explorer usage share continues a long slow decline -- 66.97 percent in August down from from 79.49 percent about two years ago. Firefox is up from 15.45 percent to 22.98 percent during the same time period.
If Chrome Frame succeeds, Firefox could easily be collateral damage. Firefox uage gains have largely come from Internet Explorer, which if Framed could give up many fewer users. Meanwhile, should Google succeed moving end users en masse from Framed IE to Chrome, Firefox growth likely would stall and over time recede. Looked at that way, Chrome Frame poses potentially more risk to Firefox than IE. Remember, Mozilla is dependent on Google paid search revenue through the browser.
Frame would be a seemingly small problem, if not for:
- The surge in competing browsers
- Monetization of browsers around search
- Increasing demand for browsers on mobile devices
- Declining developer interest in IE technologies like ActiveX
- Increasing developer interest in other Web browsers or technologies
Microsoft won the browser wars by several means, with establishment of IE as a development platform being one of the most important. Today, other than businesses with legacy dependencies, is there really any core developer interest in Internet Explorer? That's a question for comment; please pipe in on the topic.
Apple, Google and Mozilla are doing much better wooing new developers to their browsers, and, again, Chrome and Safari are based on WebKit, whether for desktop or mobile device. Mobile applications are the future, and it's there Microsoft looks surprisingly pale before brawny Apple and Google. Regarding Google, that's without factoring Chrome OS, which could directly rival Windows.
Commercial Open-Source is the Solution
Microsoft should answer WebKit for WebKit, by releasing a new browser based on a new rendering engine; put on the IE brand and ship it for desktop and mobile. For businesses and consumers that need backward compatibility, there would be IE 8. But people wanting something new and fresh or developers looking to do cool development could choose the new IE, which Microsoft should tout for its standards support.
Something else: Such an approach would be in line with Microsoft's so-called "Interoperability Principles." Additionally, about two weeks ago, Microsoft opened the CodePlex Foundation, which is supposed to bridge commercial and open-source software development. WebKit may be open source, but the practical development comes from commercial developers like Apple and Google. Microsoft could extend WebKit, much as Apple has done with Safari and drive standards around it. Example: Silverlight integration.
Bundling IE with Windows certainly helped Microsoft win the browser wars, but the company did much more, such as either developing or coming to effectively control emerging Web standards during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Microsoft isn't really driving Web standards today. A commercially developed WebKit browser, supporting HTML 5 and other standards, would strengthen Microsoft's position of influence against Apple, Google, Mozilla and other developers supporting open-source browsing engines. Done right, WebKit-based IE could even steal marketshare from other open-source browsers. IE's 67 percent usage share is helluva starting place.
By releasing WebKit-based IE, Microsoft could also:
- Offer a better IE alternative to users than Google Frame
- Nip the Google Chrome bud before it grows any meaningful usage share
- Quickly bring to market a competitive mobile browser and development platform
- Increase IE's appeal among developers and to governments demanding open-source development
- Better support emerging Microsoft Web technologies that do interest developers, such as Silverlight
- Level the compatibility and performance playing field with open-source browsers, such as Chrome and Firefox
- Unload from developers Windows baggage -- legacy technologies like ActiveX and constraints for backward compatibility
Left unchecked, Google will take Internet Explorer and Frame it. Perhaps Apple and Mozilla will break the glass. Microsoft is posed to become the Netscape of the 2010s, otherwise. Microsoft must act to preserve and even reclaim territory taken during the browser wars. There's still time, but not for long.
Score: 0
|I still don't really get what's up with IE8.... it's supposedly the most secure browser (I remember reading this somewhere on CNET.com), but still the slowest
but you'd expect something to happen with the browser, given that Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera all have faster speeds... I mean, if that many competing programs can run faster, why not IE8?
cuz as far as I can tell, the main reason that people don't like IE8 is because it's so slow
Score: -1
|I use to write add-ons for IE but then Greasemonkey came along. IE use to be cutting edge in it's configurability, now it's Firefox... soon it will be Chrome. Not sure if I will jump ship and move to Chrome.
Writing first-class-citizen extensions for Firefox just requires packing javascript with some header material telling Firefox how to load it (IE required screwing with the registry!). Firefox has more than 8000 officially recognized extensions. IE never had more than a couple hundred. Sure you could write extensions for IE in javascript, but they never were first class citizens, they couldn't modify the interface. If you wanted complexity you had to make a dll, and more often then not they would make the browser unstable (and in this day and age, nobody trusts native plugins). This is a lesson Google has learned, and so they have implemented an extension system similar to Firefox's. It's time MS got the hint, or IE will continue to bleed users.
Score: -1
|The Browser war does not exist.It's last decade's battle....It's irrelevant or put it another way its significance has been greatly diminished. All future services (even today this is true for most services), will work on all browsers supporting standards. Microsoft is not even allowed to set the default search engine or default home page in IE, so there is very little to gain from IE. For example, Microsoft's newly released Office Web Apps work on all browsers, even today.It does not matter for Microsoft which browser the user will use to access the service, as long as it's Microsoft's services not some competitor's.
Score: -2
|MS ActiveX is crap, IE does NOT follow standards!!
Anyone knows about support for svg?
In IE there is nothing, nada nothing!!
While Forefox, WebKit-based browsers and a lot of other browsers can render svg!
Java is much better than doing something IE-specific!
Most web developers wished IE would be standards-compliant!
But it's not because that's the way MS works, pretending to be the only ones.
This MS is going to loose! Because the way it thread customers.
As a developer, I want to code once and deploy, run everywhere in case of a web-related project!
IE just hasn't got the stuff it takes, IE has got Java and this is the best solution because everything currently supports it!
Score: -5
|MarketLinx is one of those IE only developers and it sucks. They make the MLXchange product - a multiple listing real estate website. I have many realtor clients that have Macs and they all have to either be setup with Bootcamp or some virtualization product like Fusion, Parallels or VirtualBox in order to have Windows so they can use IE to access ONE website!!!!!!! And they all HAVE to use that site. It is ridiculous to have to go through hoops to support another industry's "standard".
Score: -2
|I agree with this article but I have some points that I would like to share. I'm a developer and more and more we're moving towards alternatives to IE.
We want to build standard based websites with cool technologies that simply work in all platforms. But the thing is.
I think as suggested in the article, Microsoft will end up releasing a standard compliant browser but in my opinion Microsoft is looking further away and realising that the browser will in time become irrelevant. Let me explain. What really matters regarding web content is the page renderer. At any time that render can be implemented in whatever device one so wish. The real fight is not the "browser" or the renderer. The real fight is the services around it. Look at Firefox as an example. The secret of its increasing success is not page rendering. The secret is the extensions system they have in place that give a browser added functionality and tighter integration with web services.
All of this companies realise that. Google as Google Apps. Microsoft has their own web suite of applications and so on.
When you look at the mobile phone market and what people are looking when they buy a new mobile phone is their integration with web services like Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and so on. What I mean is. Who ever is more prepared to move and provide services that are in the cloud integrated Will be the winner. And in that regard I think who is winning the fight is not as clear.
To tell you the truth I think Microsoft is way ahead of the competition for one big reason. They are not "fixed" to a platform as some say. Microsoft has their own console, their own mobile OS, their own cloud service module, their own TV services module like WebTV. Their presence is noticed in enterprise enviroment with far more applications for multiple purposes than their competitiors have. My point is, Microsost has a foot in way more markets than their competitors. And their moving into integrating their applications in all the different parts of the company.
Let me put it this way.
You got your Xbox 600 at home with the Project Natal sensor that integrates voice and movement. The Xbox 600 uses a new version of Xbox Live that integrates with Facebook, your mail services, your media center PC, your mobile device. They're all DLNA complient. They all have support for widgets. At the same time Microsoft provides an online gaming service using a web farm of cloud computers that allow you to play any game in any device. They use Silverlight with Smooth streaming of live content, dynamically changing the streaming condictions to provide the lowest latency and best picture image. As you watch a clip on youtube in your mobile device you send a voice command using microsoft speech recognition available in your mobile phone to dim your lights room using microsoft home automation services. I think you guys get the picture. Microsoft's reach is far greater thus they can potentially provide a tighter integration of services between devices. Now in this example that I just gave, where is it in anyway relevant the browser, the platform or even the OS? It is not. What really matters is what services you provide and how you integrate them.
Score: 2
|people buy into anything google way too easy.
Score: 3
|MS already announced they were dropping Trident in favor of a new engine back in the IE8 dev days.
Score: 0
|Actually, I can't track down where I saw this mentionned back then, only mentions of Gazelle and that it might be used for things others than replacing Trident. So unless someone can quote what I think I saw, I guess it's still just rumor.
Not that I care anyway, I stay away from IE and not just because of its render engine.
Score: -1
|This seems to be the only solution for Microsoft these days with IE and Windows, copy others or take advantage of the innovation of other companies (i.e. Apple) then re-brand it and claim innovation.
Score: -7
|I'm sorry, but what has Apple recently innovated in terms of a browser? Safari? Granted, they did invent WebKit (WebKit, however, derives from a combination of KDE's Konqueror KHTML engine and KJS, neither of which did Apple invent. They only applied enhancements and then rolled that back into the KHTML engine.).
The only orignal item they have put into Safari is Cover Flow. Top Sites? Ripped from Opera's Speed Dial. Tabs in the title bar? Ripped from Google Chrome. Private Browsing? Yeah, ripped from Internet Explorer, FireFox, and Chrome. Amazing how Apple is innovating all over the place, huh?
So, to your point, where is Microsoft doing anything that Apple and other companies aren't doing?
http://en.wikipedia.org/...afari_%28web_browser%29
Score: -2
|Internet Explorer 8 is so slow I don't see what they're copying...
The one thing that they apparently have is best security though
Score: -1
|Microsoft is SUCH an embarrassment on the browser world.
It's like a 5 yr old fat kid in pads, standing around at the high school football field, just watching plays; It's worthless and no body wants it.
They've been, and are getting, beaten by open source browsers consistently. The only reason Internet Explorer got where it is, and is still out there, because it's bundled with the Operating System.
It's got major security flaws and what's worse, it's actually integrated with the Operating System; it's stupid. It opens your system up to so many more problems...
I agree with 'smist08' that Internet Explorer is slow, and just by the very use of it, I feel like I stepped back in time; like I've to start using Win 3.1 again... [try that it's funny]
Microsoft should just concede, quit Internet Explorer and let the people that know how to do it, and do it well, manage it. At least the open source developers/options know what web standards are...
But it obvious, they don't want to do that- it would hurt their, so called, pride.
Thanks,
LHenryJr.
www.lehsys.com
Score: -5
|It's definitely slow, but i remember seeing a stat on cnet.com saying that IE8 is the most secure browser compared to competition
Score: -1
|Why are you so concerned about what happens to Microsoft and IE? I don't see how you can call it a browser "market" when browsers are given away for free. I finally switched to Firefox because it is so much faster than IE, but as a developer, I am interested in supporting IE. And I do still use it from time to time.Also as a developer, I realize that the IE browser control is used in a lot of different programs, not just browsers. For example, the browser pane in WinAmp. Whether you like it or not, the IE stack is a necessary part of Windows, whether you use it for browsing or not. Without it, a lot of programs that depend on it would quit working.
Score: 3
|Can you imagine if Microsoft put this plug-in in any other browser? They would be absolutely lambasted (and probably heavily fined.)
Somewhat amusing to see this type of behavior come from their direct competitors.
Score: 5
|They did and they were. They used Windows Update to add .Net Silverlight support into Firefox without asking permission or making it clear what they were doing. Pissed a lot of people off.
Score: -2
|Source?
Who are these people pissed off?
Because silverlight has always been an optional update...
Score: 0
|It's about the .NET plugin thing!!!
A lot of people don't like it and try to remove it!
Including myself.
Score: -1
|Microsoft won over Netscape because they gave it away for free.
IE will continue to be tops because Windows PCs will continue to be 90% of the market with IE. The average joe(not JW :-) ) doesn't care what browser he uses and would guess most PC buyers are average joes including the young kids of today. Enterprise is another dilemma that relies on IE for many things. The other browsers will eat away at IE very slowly and many many years down the road. Who knows what it will be like in 2050.
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|"Microsoft won the browser wars by several means, with establishment of IE as a development platform being one of the most important."
Wow, you really are delusional. Microsoft won the browser war simply because they leveraged their desktop monopoly and bundled IE with Microsoft Windows.
Score: -6
|Actually, IE 6 was a better browser than Navigator (not saying much.)
And IE is still bundled with Windows, yet they have lost share consistently every month for several years now.
Score: 2
|Is bundled the correct term? I believe embedded is more suited, as you couldn't quite remove all of Internet Exploder due to links throughout the system. The fact that people aren't *generally* knowledgeable or willing to look for another browser helped.
Besides, as you say Netscape's transition from version 4 to version 6 was a huge mess as well as an opportunity.
Score: 0
|Well I say bundled because there are tweaks to remove most traces it from previous versions of Windows, (and a supported method in Windows 7)
Score: 0
|How is this different from what Apple does with Safari? It has been bundled (embedded) since OS-X 10.3.
Score: 0
|It's a whole lot easier to just install and run Chrome. Adding cf: to the beginning of URLs seems a pain. After using Chrome, Safari or Firefox, going back to IE is like working in molasses. I'm pretty sure MS is never going to deliver a WebKit browser. I suspect they will come up with a new home grown rendering engine, that due to "improvements" will have all sorts of compatibility and compliance problems.
Score: 0
|Isn't this already the case (IE8 compliance mode)?
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