“The fact that Google believes that they can launch a browser based on new technology means that the market is alive.” –Blizzard
monopoly-e-commerce by Daniel Broche. License: 
It is a pretty bizarre “market” where the major participants are, in market share order:
- a repeatedly convicted monopolist that makes no money off its product in this market
- a non-profit that makes no money (directly) off its product in this market, only indirectly off ads1
- a company that makes no money off its product in this market
- a company that actually makes money2 off its product in this market
- (probably up to 3 or 4 soon) a company that sells a lot of ads, in large part through #2, but which won’t make any money off its product in this market
So, yes, it is a market, given a very, very broad definition of ‘market’. But a very unusual one.
This is not necessarily a bad thing- the same standard that makes it difficult to make a differentiated, profitable browser also makes for more innovation at the web app and operating system levels3. But as google hinted in their intro comic, getting innovation to happen at the same layer as the standard is hard. (Some related thoughts here.)
Will be interesting, as always, to see where this goes from here.
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I think you’re oversimplifying some of these bits. It’s far more complex than just the revenue picture. I can only talk about the motives of one of those players but the rest of the players have motives. Most of the motives are money-related, some direct and some indirect. But it’s fine. It means people are investing.
Can’t disagree – it’s very much a strange market. Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla Foundation, Opera, and now Google – five organisations all producing competitive products, and not one of them charging users a cent. I can’t think of any case even remotely similar…
I think that the fact that these weird models exist is largely because of player #1. They drove the per-unit dollar value of the browser market to zero. So the only people who are still trying are those that have other financial models or have a strategic interest in owning a browser.
Opera seems to be the only one surviving with a monetary model. We’ll see how long that lasts given the new entrants into the mobile market. Maybe for a very very long time, especially if they convert fully to a service company.
I think it’s bizarre that Mozilla makes money through Google. Google makes money through ads and Firefox’s most popular add-on is… Adblock plus.
Adblock is great for users, but is terrible for many websites that live on advertising.
I don’t know how Google Chrome can fix that, since it’s open source and probably will support third-part add-ons, but maybe they have plans about it.
Simon: commercial free to air television? I don’t pay for that, yet the provider benefits if I watch it (e.g. through advertising, by me not watching some other station, etc).
Correction Nr. 2: Apple has the same deal as Mozilla Corp.
They get money for each Google search too.
( One more reason to use Firefox IMHO, because I think Mozilla.orgs intentions are way more noble than Apples. ).
I find it interesting also that #5 is making a new supposed ground changing browser out of components of #2 and #3 :-)
How unusual is this? There are lots of markets–instant messaging, microblogging, search engines, web-based email–where the key players either don’t make direct revenue at all or make money only via advertising.
Consider too: the market share profile in the search engine market is converging with the profile of the browser market. It’s easy to imagine the Google/Yahoo/Microsoft market share in search looking identical to the Microsoft/Mozilla/Apple market share numbers in web browsers. Search is clearly a competitive market despite Google’s dominance, and as far as I can tell so is the browser market.
chris: I think that the fact that these weird models exist is largely because of player #1. Agreed completely. That doesn’t make it non-weird; I’d think that the normal response in such markets is for people to cede the primary market to the monpolist and move into nearby profitable niches rather than to use other markets as sources of certain-to-be-lost funding.
Marco: I did think it was interesting that the comic made little mention of plugins changing the behavior of the browser itself.
Tim, Jamesh: advertising is all well and good, but only one of these players has advertising as a primary revenue stream, and like I pointed out, all of the three players who advertise make their revenue almost completely from… another one of the players.
Non-advertising, non-charging, non-compensation-in-any-way markets like microblogging aren’t really markets- they’re just sophisticated giveaways financed by extracting cash from venture capitalists, an even more unusual definition of ‘market’. At least every player in this market expects to get something non-financial in return for their product- compensation for another part of their platform, developer contributions, etc.
Tim: I do think your point about browsing and search engine market share converging is very interesting, since it suggests a massive leap for Google and suggests that Apple should be in the search space. I’ve always joked that Google should acquire Apple and Nintendo to build the front ends for their webOS; maybe it’ll finally happen.
[…] Will be interesting, as always, to see where this goes from here. almost all by way of the new #5really!chance that Linux or Apple are viable desktop OS platforms right now if the web is not based on open standards is effectively zeroSyndicated 2008-09-02 02:57:07 from Luis Villa’s Blog […]
Well, before Google rolled out AdSense, you could have said the same thing about it. Twitter will probably find a way to make money off of its microblogging platform, either by serving up some kind of ads, or by getting itself acquired by a larger company that uses it to burnish its overall brand image. I don’t think a business has to be profitable before it can be considered a “market.”
And just to flesh out the browsers/search engines comparison:
Current browser share (Net App):
Internet Explorer: 73.81%
Mozilla Firefox: 18.43%
Safari: 6.14%
Other: <2%
Current search share (Neilsen/Netratings):
Google: 60.2%
Yahoo: 17.4%
Microsoft: 11.9%
Other: ~12%
So at the moment, the search market is more competitive. But at the rate Google has been rising (up from 46% in early 2006) and IE has been falling (down from 85% in early 2006), the lines should cross around the end of next year.
[…] by a former Self researcher. I wonder if V8 is faster than Dalvik; that would be sad. Luis Villa: Quick thought on Blizzard�s thoughts on Google Chrome. Dude, wut about OmniWeb!?! Bonus: “Non-advertising, non-charging, non-compensation-in-any-way […]
[…] a comment September 3rd, 2008 wmfTime:01:10 amhttp://wmf.editthispage.com/2008/09/02Luis Villa: Quick thought on Blizzards thoughts on Google Chrome. Dude, wut about OmniWeb!?! Bonus: “Non-advertising, non-charging, non-compensation-in-any-way […]
[…] wmfhttp://wmf.editthispage.com/2008/09/02Luis Villa: Quick thought on Blizzards thoughts on Google Chrome. Dude, wut about OmniWeb!?! Bonus: “Non-advertising, non-charging, non-compensation-in-any-way […]
[…] existing developers and projects > instead of starting your own incompatible projects, Google! http://tieguy.org/blog/2008/09/01/quick-thought-on-blizzards-thoughts-on-google-chrome/ It is a pretty bizarre “market” where the major participants are, in market share order: 1. a […]
i’ve been using Chrome for about a day now and it seems to be a lot faster than FireFox or IE… though i do miss the “previously closed tabs” feature in Firefox
[…] if the web is not based on open standards is effectively zero [↩] Post a comment — Trackback URI RSS 2.0 feed for these comments This entry (permalink) was posted on Monday, September 1, 2008, at […]