September 14th, 2008 Software, Web | 6 Comments

If browsers were umbrellas

Let me tell you a story about browser market share. It is going to be rainy and slightly depressing but no monsters. Well, maybe one.

Photo by saxonmoseley.

Imagine Internet as very rainy world. Where people have to take their umbrellas to visit their favorite coffee-shops (sites). Everyone has an umbrella but there are few different brands.

• Internet Explorer is blue umbrella. Everyone has one and people are used to them. Can be newer or older but still staple.
• Firefox is teenager orange umbrella. It is really bright and with plenty of hooks for placing cool colorful patches on it.
• Opera is red umbrella. It is stylish in plain way and not widely advertised. People with these really like them.

So one day Very Big Company announces

• Chrome – three-colored umbrella.

Company never made any umbrellas and no one is sure they are even good at it. Umbrella itself looks rough, is heavy and has few holes.

But some of coffee-shops are inspired. It’s Very Big Company, right? They make huge banners promoting new umbrella. People look at those and decide to use umbrellas a bit. Just to try.

Coffee shops are overjoyed. They guessed right – new umbrella must be awesome if people are so fast to use it. They put up even more banners and announce that new umbrella is the umbrella. It is going to take over the rainy world.

- Hey, they say that new umbrella is going to kill the ones we were using for years… Bit stupid.

- Uh-huh.

Homework – find a monster in the story.