Exploring Browser Battles

With good reason I believe that one of the strongest branding and marketing moves ever made was done by Microsoft®. The act of naming their browser “internet explorer” and making that a backbone to their system software is absolutely genius.

I may have complimented them in my previous statements, but please let it be known that their fantastic marketing and packaging concept should also go down as the greatest snow job to consumers in history. What!?! It may seem like I am talking out of both sides of my mouth, but I can most certainly separate the two.

The naming of the browser is brilliant in the way it resonated with and continues to resonate with consumers. Not every computer user is a developer. If they were, my job would probably be notably easier. Over the years, I have had numerous conversations with family, friends, clients and complete strangers about what they use to access the internet. The general consensus for non techy types and average users is that “internet explorer” is how you get on the internet. Some people can’t even really seem to grasp the idea that you can get on the internet with anything else. Making that software standard and part of the overall operating system takes it to a whole new level. People actually believe that the only way to go to a website is by using the aforementioned program.

It’s mind blowing to me that in today’s society where we are inundated with multiple choices for everything the we need, desire and use, that a consumer would actually believe in such a narrow minded concept and not question it. Because of their lock on the market, Microsoft® does as it pleases by not conforming to the same coding standards as other browsers. They don’t care or really haven’t needed to because how else would you access the web? This presents huge problems for developers as elements and parts of websites tend to work flawlessly everywhere except for in IE. As a designer and developer I can’t even get my own wife to stop using the program. She uses Chrome often, but only when she is having problems with IE. She understands the problematic nature of IE, but insists on using it because she’s always used it. Like comfort food for the computer savvy or something.

Kudos to you Bill Gates and team.

Chrome and Firefox offer users an incredible and highly customizable experience – from extensions, add ons, themes and color options that can make your life easier, make you more productive, load quicker and are so stable they rarely crash. Microsoft’s® strangle hold on the market dwindles more and more everyday as companies like Google are spending mass amounts of time and money to open the consumers eyes to a new world of possibilities. Google’s campaign has been so affective it has forced Microsoft® to improve their browser substantially and spend tons of money to offset the growth of their competition.

The question still remains… how are you surfing the inter-webs?