Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Internet Explorer 9 is out. Yawn.

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9 on Monday.  My fellow Computerworld blogger Richi Jennings has collected several comments from other bloggers about IE9.  My issue is that I've become addicted to Mozilla Firefox and its many useful extensions such as Blank Canvas, Firebug, and Saved Password Editor.  The problem Microsoft faces is that there's really no reason for me to switch from Firefox, so the fact that they came out with a new browser just makes me yawn. 

It's kind of like Bing.  Bing appears to be an excellent search tool, but I'm very happy with Google.  I'm so happy, in fact, that I don't feel an inclination to move away from it right now.  At some point in the future, Google may mess up and do something stupid to drive me away (the history of business is littered with executives damaging or killing great companies by making bad decisions...I've done it a couple of times myself).  If that happens, then there's an opportunity for someone else to move in and take over.  Unfortunately for Microsoft, since Firefox is a global community project and not a project of a single individual or company, it's not likely to make the same missteps that a company might, so they may never have an opportunity to make a difference.

Sure, I know MS has a huge market share, but that's based on their dominance of the desktop.  Given the importance and growth of cloud computing, that dominance is likely to decrease and, with it, there goes the market share for IE. 

Inertia favors the incumbent.  For me that's Firefox.

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