[FTrain]

Why do companies fight Microsoft over the browser market? I understand how Google and the search engines make money, but I don't understand the business model for the browser space. How is it valuable marketshare?

[TETENAL]

These days it's impossible to sell a computer/operating system without a web browser. It's therefore essential for Apple to have a first class web browser for Macintosh. Microsoft has one for the same reason, and by "shaping" the web a little bit to their liking, they can lock out others. Opera's business is mainly devices that don't run Windows (PDAs, cell phones etc.)

[ManOfSteal]

It's not about marketshare, it's about making a better product.

[Apfhex]

If no one else made browsers, then we'd all be stuck using Longhorn come 2006 (or 2007...2008... ) for internet surfing since MS won't be distributing IE separately anymore, and it's the worst mainstream browser out there anyway (this from my experience in making websites and as an end user).

[FTrain]

So am I understanding correctly that the reason to do it is not because there is any money in browsers but because you have to make one if you offer an OS? I guess what I don't get is why Firefox exists then--they don't make an OS.

My original question wasn't a criticism of making them, just curiosity about how anyone actually makes money with them. One of you mentioned that it's not about marketshare, but about making a better product, but it can only be about making a better product if there is a business rationale to do so. That was the root of my question--just generally, what is the business rationale for making them and fighting over the space. I guess I understand it. But maybe not completely.

[TETENAL]

Originally posted by FTrain:
I guess what I don't get is why Firefox exists then--they don't make an OS.

Firefox (and all the Mozillas) is an open source project. It is in large parts written by people who write it in their spare-time (as a hobby if you will) by intrinsic motivation (creating a better product, pride to work in a well known project etc.) It is also supported by companies that do make an OS (Linux distributions, Unices).

[bmedina]

Why make OS X when Windows exists?

[Chuckit]

Some people program because they want to make huge piles of money. Some people program because they enjoy it and/or want to make a product that can be useful to them. The Firefox developers are the latter type. The former type, in general, are frustrated wage slaves (with a few exceptions, like Bill Gates).

[Millennium]

Originally posted by FTrain:
Why do companies fight Microsoft over the browser market?

1) Because Microsoft only makes browsers for Windows. Firefox is available on platforms which IE is not, and the rendering core behind Safari began life as a similar project. The business model is simple: keeping your platform viable to a huge number of users who consider browsers to be almost as vital as word processing if not more so.

2) Because Microsoft's browser is so atrocious that entirely new classes of malware have been made possible thanks to its Swiss-cheese security, and so bad that the Web is fully five years behind where it might otherwise be technology-wise if Microsoft would only conform to real Web standards.