Does It Matter Who Wins the Browser Wars?

(MoneyWatch)  There was a time when browser wars grabbed the attention of everyone following the tech sector, with the struggle between Netscape and Microsoft. These days, the struggle goes on but with a much larger field. My colleague Michael Hickins sees Chrome as aggressively advancing, showing that Google understands the needs to be on all desktops. However, I'd have to disagree on two counts. First, Chome still has a miniscule portion of market share. Second, given the emerging structure of computing, does it really matter any more?

According to browser market share numbers released by Net Applications, last month Internet Explorer had a 66.97 percent piece of the pie, down from 73.64 percent in October 2008. In January, IE had 69.72 percent. So it's definitely trending down, though at a rate that it will take years to lose control. Who's winning most of the market share? Firefox, which has gone from just under 20 percent in October 2008 to almost 23 percent last month. Here's the Net Applications graph:

Chrome went from 1 percent on its release to 2.84 percent -- an improvement, but hardly anything suggesting that the world is panting in wait for an OS based on Linux and using Chrome as a front end. (By the way, although Michael notes that Google claims having lined up a number of vendors ready to release systems using Chrome, most of those vendors immediately and noticeably distanced themselves from the statement.) Safari climbed from 2.87 percent to 4.07 percent, while Opera lost slightly, going from 2.12 percent to 2.04 percent. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether it has any importance. Consider a few things:

• No one makes money off browsers, because they all have to be free, although Google probably looks to a future of delivering advertising via a browser.
• Given the trends, what seems likely in the mid-term is a computing world dominated by IE and Firefox.
• It ultimately doesn't matter what browser someone runs.

That last point is the big one. People have their preferences, but that is in an area that doesn't make money. How do you make money in computing? Delivering services. But the delivery of services is slowly becoming unbound from the provision of desktop software. What is going to matter is not who controls an outbound window designed to global standards they don't control, but who controls the inbound systems that deliver the services. We are seeing a switch from desktop- to cloud-centric computing. From that view, all browser market share offers is bragging rights, but nothing that cements a business position.

Image via stock.xchng user memoossa, site standard license.