Browser Wars Profitable?

[bobdelt]

How does Opera make money? Why does MS, Google, and Apple care what browser we use?

It's free software...what's the business model? Where is the revenue?

 

[IamDavid]

ego?

 

[JaYp146]

I seem to remember Opera defaulting to Yahoo as its search provider ... maybe that's your answer?

 

[EagleKeeper]

Search Engine (as stated above) plus the home portal.

Many people will not change the home portal location as long as they can get to where they are going.

 

[bruceb]

I always set the home page to what I prefer (Yahoo finance) and also set the search engine to my preference (google USA) in my case.

 

[mechBgon]

I think Microsoft's interest is partly that they need to offer a centrally-manageable browser to support their corporate customer base. How dumb would it be to make the Information Technology staff go and manually deploy, audit, enforce & maintain browsers on every computer in the fleet? Well, that's how every other Windows-compatible browser works, except for Microsoft's own. By making a centrally-manageable browser (IE5 through IE8), they give enterprise customers an additional reason to stick with Microsoft-based OSes and domains.

Also, by guaranteeing a support lifecycle, they ease the customer's mind about "well, how long is this going to be supported for? Oh wait, Microsoft spells that out right here, it's supported for the life of the OS it came out with. Ten years, unlike these come-&-go open-source ones that keep yanking the rug out from under us after 18 months."

That's my take on it, anyway. Having had to manually maintain a fleet equipped with a certain open-source browser for a couple years, it certainly stuck in my mind

 

[Nothinman]

It's free software...what's the business model? Where is the revenue?

I don't know that it's something that can be easily accounted. Whoever dominates the browser markets gets to set defacto standards. And since MS sells a lot of other products they can tie them together. This is especially prevalent in corporate internal networks where IE is required because it plays so well with IIS, ActiveX, ASP, etc. MS is only now looking at real standards because of the competition.

By making a centrally-manageable browser (IE5 through IE8), they give enterprise customers an additional reason to stick with Microsoft-based OSes and domains.

Sad, but true. I have no idea why neither Opera or Mozilla have put any effort into GPOs for their browsers.

Also, by guaranteeing a support lifecycle, they ease the customer's mind about "well, how long is this going to be supported for? Oh wait, Microsoft spells that out right here, it's supported for the life of the OS it came out with. Ten years, unlike these come-&-go open-source ones that keep yanking the rug out from under us after 18 months."

Very few people pay attention to that crap. And MS' support for browsers 10 years down the road is what gives those crap 3rd party developers justification for supporting IE6 when IE8 is out. If MS' browsers actually followed standards people would have more choices because it wouldn't matter what browser you used.

That's my take on it, anyway. Having had to manually maintain a fleet equipped with a certain open-source browser for a couple years, it certainly stuck in my mind

I think the fact that you had to use Windows should be what sticks out in your mind. On Linux I can easily deploy a Mozilla package and have corporate defaults because on Linux they load up all of the profile information in /etc/mozilla/ before loading the local /home/blah/.mozilla stuff.

 

[mechBgon]

On Linux I can easily deploy a Mozilla package and have corporate defaults because on Linux they load up all of the profile information in /etc/mozilla/ before loading the local /home/blah/.mozilla stuff.

Out of curiosity, can you maintain enforcement of your desired config in spite of user attempts to change it? I suppose a permissions change on the right files could do it.

Sad, but true. I have no idea why neither Opera or Mozilla have put any effort into GPOs for their browsers.

I'm not even talking by GPO, necessarily. They could simply cook up a central-management console and agent, like you'd see with an enterprise security software package, e.g. ePolicy Orchestrator for McAfee/NAI's product lineup.

Regarding the support lifecycle, the comments to this blog were what came to mind: Firefox in 2008: No single version available for the whole year?

 

[Pretty Cool]

It is obvious why Google introduced a broswer (other than getting peoples' personal info for advertisers). They want to reduce the amount of money they pay for click thoughs to the makers of other browsers. Last year, there were stories that Google was paying Mozilla something like $60million per year. Opera and other less-popular browsers get much less, so that is their incentive. Nowadays browsers have multiple choices for searching, homepage, and toolbars which is probably because those companies agreed to some sort of financial arrangement.

 

[Nothinman]

Out of curiosity, can you maintain enforcement of your desired config in spite of user attempts to change it? I suppose a permissions change on the right files could do it.

Yea, I could think of a few ways that wouldn't be too hard to implement. But in the long run it's more of a policy and education thing than a technical thing. If you can't keep your employees following the rules then you need new employees.

I'm not even talking by GPO, necessarily. They could simply cook up a central-management console and agent, like you'd see with an enterprise security software package, e.g. ePolicy Orchestrator for McAfee/NAI's product lineup.

Well technically you could do that yourself since all of the preferences, extensions, etc are just files stored in the user's profile directory. It would take a little work up front but wouldn't be all that difficult.

Regarding the support lifecycle, the comments to this blog were what came to mind: Firefox in 2008: No single version available for the whole year?

FF2 missed all of '08 by 13 days, that's a little bit of nit picking isn't it? And FF3 was out a full 6 months before the end of '08, isn't that more than enough time for testing and upgrading?

I would really love if the support lifecycle of commercial software meant anything but it really doesn't. I've had far, far less issues with OSS software than I ever had with commercial software that it's pretty much ridiculous to call commercial software support better in any way.

 

[Rangoric]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I would really love if the support lifecycle of commercial software meant anything but it really doesn't. I've had far, far less issues with OSS software than I ever had with commercial software that it's pretty much ridiculous to call commercial software support better in any way.

It is about security fixes, not so much the actual support of it, but the updates to make sure that it is secure.

 

[corkyg]

Go here and download and read the 2008 Annual Report in PDF format. Opera makes money - a lot of which is in Internet devices.

Money

They are partnered with Google in some areas.

 

[Nothinman]

It is about security fixes, not so much the actual support of it, but the updates to make sure that it is secure.

And my comment still stands, commercial software support is worse all around IME.