Windows Browser Ballot: the Winners and the Losers

Barence writes "It's a year since the Windows browser ballot came into being in Europe — but has it made any difference? PC Pro has surveyed the minor browser makers — who theoretically had the most to gain from the ballot — to find out what impact it's had on their business. The answers are very mixed. One of the 12, FlashPeak SlimBrowser, claims it's resulted in fewer than 200 downloads per day. Others claim it's transformed their business. One thing is for certain: the big boys still dominate."

Re:That agrees with my figures

[kevinmenzel]

And since none of the major browser trends changed with the introduction of the Ballot, it also shows that the entire situation was overblown, and that there was a competitive market in place which was (and is) correcting the mistake of leaving IE uncontested for so long.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:That agrees with my figures

[bonch]

People have always been free to use alternative browsers on their desktop machines.

Got to love lousy statisticians

[SmallFurryCreature]

Yeah yeah, extrapolating future trends by drawing a straight line between past points. That is SUCH a reliable method.

But hey, good news, by these figures IE will be at 0% in 5 years and Google at well over a 100%.

The browser ballot changed things, would the lines have been as they are now without it? Nobody knows but it is not beyond imagination that IE would have bottomed out 50% instead and might even have climbed with the release of IE9.

Basically, those who claim the ballot did not have an affect are claiming something like the new iPhone had no effect on iPhone sales. The old one was selling well, the new one sells well, ergo no change... because the old one would of course have done the same sale figures without a new release.

Re:Link A has more hits than link B

[nmb3000]

It might have been a bit unfair that MS had a stranglehold on the browser market for those PCs that had Windows pre-installed.

Except that IE's market share was slipping long before the EU felt the need to pointlessly start throwing their weight around.

Choice is good, and it's great that the EU evened the playing field. But too many choices will confuse the general public.

The EU did not level anything. All they did, as you note, is introduce confusion. Anyone who's read much of Raymond Chen's blog [msdn.com] knows the thought that goes into initial user experience. Starting off by throwing up dialog boxes and asking the user questions they cannot answer is NOT helpful and just reminds people that computers are hard to use.

Something like 90% of users probably fall into one or two categories when it comes to the stupid browser ballot:

1. Already have a browser they like. Ballot serves no purpose.
2. Have no idea what a "browser" is, and just want to check their email. They click a button randomly, or maybe based on which icon is the prettiest. Ballot still serves no purpose for the user -- all it manages to do is artificially spread around market share to no-name browsers.

Given TFS's saying "The answers are very mixed.", I would guess most fall into the 2nd category. Maybe browsers that haven't seen an improvement should make shinier icons.

Re:Link A has more hits than link B

[__aatirs3925]

I agree that there is a choice. The choice between buying the product or not buying it. Microsoft doesn't force people to use only their browser. Microsoft only supplies a pre-bundled browser. If you google web browser in google, you will get firefox as the first hit, not chrome. If it were chrome, there wouldn't be much of a problem either since it's an excellent browser to begin win. People can search for whatever browser they desire, and they can find charts of what browser supports what. It's not Microsoft's problem if people don't know how to do research, a skill that is learned early in life. Even if Microsoft were to force people to use only IE, it's their right to do so as a corporation. If people don't like that, they can go somewhere else. I know that's how I felt with the iPad, I went to Android and am happy with the move.

People ultimately have the choice for what they do in life, what they download, and the things they decide to make. They can also choose to ignore, stop using, and move someplace else if they're not satisfied with what's going on. The thing that makes America so great is the freedom to make decisions, the ones you want to do to build your life, your business, and even your country. It is a matter of choice that is given to you, whether you know you have it or not, it is there. It will be a grim day when America is nannied like those in the UK (no offense but it doesn't work too well with capitalism). - 2cents

Re:That agrees with my figures

[TeXMaster]

That's not true. IE got the dominance because IE6 was the best browser at the time, others didn't come even close to it in regards of speed, memory usage and ability to render pages properly.

When IE6 came out, there were already faster, more compact browsers which had better standard compliance (e.g. Opera, which went ad-supported by 2000, IE6 came out in 2001). The only true part in your statement is "the ability to render pages properly", and even that is only true because pages were actually designed to be viewed with IE (so obviously they rendered better in that non-standard-compliant browser).

Note that at the time the only real challenger for IE was Netscape

The only famous challenger was Netscape. Which is exactly the kind of thing that a browser ballot could have solved at the time.

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