(Net) Surfing the winds of change?

Google announced today that it has reached a distribution agreement with Sony. The deal involves that Google's internet browser, Chrome, will be pre-installed on the new Sony Vaio models. The move comes a year after Google launched Chrome in a market long dominated by Internet Explorer. Also today, Opera 10 was launched.

Of course, there is a lot of debate in establishing which of the five main Internet browsers (according to me, listed in the picture below) is the best. I do not want to go in the technicalities that such a debate would involve. Firstly, because, frankly, it is beyond my current technical knowledge. Secondly, and more importantly, because these technical stuff may not matter at all in the end.


Google's bitter tone at Chrome's less than impressive user adoption (see the figures at the end of this post) highlights a key issue in this fierce competition:

"Google executives express frustration at what they consider a lack of interest among internet users about browsers. “Awareness is shockingly low” given how much people rely on browsers, said Mr Rakowski. “It’s absolutely a problem that people don’t know what a browser is, or how to evaluate one." (excerpt taken from Financial Times' article on the matter)

I find this declaration important because, for the first time, another reason other than Microsoft's antitrust issues and imposed dominance is being pointed out as a cause for IE's long standing success in the face of competition.

And I tend to agree with it. People simply don't care that much about their Internet browser's capabilities. If the page loads slowly, it's the internet provider's fault. Or the computer's fault. Or any other cause except the browser. The improvements made with each new browser version are simply too subtle for normal consumers to notice.

From a personal experience, I can highlight another reason for Chrome's and other browsers' difficulties in catching up with Internet Explorer: dear-old habit. People simply get used to their browser. I for one just click the browser icon unconsciously every time I turn on my computer. It has become just another reflex we make in a fast paced world, in which decisions are made in seconds and repeated consequently, for the sake of simplicity and saved time.

I have tried other browsers than the one I am using now and liked all of them. I even made amends to switch to the new browser from the next day. However, I always ended up clicking the old browser icon and the new browser ultimately became a forgotten icon on my desktop.

The point is that it takes a lot of time to convince people to develop new habits. Unlearning to do something can be a very challenging task. And this means that on the medium term, it's not the fastest, most complete browser that's going to lead the market. It's the most familiar one.

To end, just a brief overview of the current market shares, according to Net Applications:

Internet Explorer: 67.7%

Mozilla: 22.5%

Safari: 4%

Chrome: 2.59%

Source: Net Applications, July 2009