This article was kindly guest written by David Bennett for Neowin.
Firefox, many would have us believe, is taking over the world. As I write this article, I"m told the browser has been downloaded almost six million times in just over two weeks, and one survey is suggesting Internet Explorer use has dropped to below 90% for the first time in years. Onestat.com"s statistics say IE usage has dropped by 5% since May, while Mozilla Browsers have grown by just the same amount. IE6 is being used by just under 81%; IE5 by 4.2% and 5.5 by 3.7%. Firefox usage is sitting around 4.5%.
This has all prompted claims from its advocates that it"s going to take over Internet Explorer"s crown as the most-used browser on the net. Unfortunately, open-source fans, that just isn"t going to happen.
Firefox is a great browser. I won"t deny that. I use it myself. But then, I, and indeed most of you who read this article, are far from typical internet users. The typical internet user couldn"t even tell you what the word "browser" means. They simply know that if they click on that pretty blue "e" on their desktop, the internet opens up in front of them. They don"t care about web standards; open source means nothing to them; and if you use the words "tabbed browsing" in front of them, you might as well be speaking French. This is the group which now uses the internet most-of-all: the don"t-cares.
Internet Explorer, we know, got to this point of domination through a variety of tactics, forcing the dominant Netscape out of the market. It"s been said this wouldn"t have happened if it wasn"t for the fact that IE4 beat Netscape 4 hands down (it did... I had to use Netscape 4 the other day, it was horrible). But the fact is, it would have happened anyway. For it was around this time that the internet really came into its own. Sure, it had been around for years earlier, but now there were more and more ISPs, easy connection deals and a variety of incentives to sign up and go online for the first time. And, just at this time, an icon appeared on 90% of the computer desktops in the world - handily labelled "Internet Explorer". Whether people know what a browser is or not, there"s no doubt in their minds what this program will do.
And we"re still in the same position now, a good few years later. We have a net dominated by people who don"t know and care even less about how they get to their favourite site. And surely, the only way Firefox - or any other browser, for that matter - is ever going to get the crown back is if Bill Gates has a mild brain tumour, suspends IE and decides to bundle Firefox with every copy of Windows from now on. Think of it... instead of having the big "e" labelled "Internet Explorer", you see a different icon - but the title underneath it reads simply "Internet". That"s what most people think of the web as anyway, so there"d still be no doubt over what to click on.