A couple of days ago I decided to ditch Firefox as my default browser. Why?

In a way it’s simple and in a way it isn’t. So let’s begin with the simple.

The Simple

Firefox has led the browsing experience for a long time – ever since Microsoft figured it had established an impenetrable monopoly and then forgot that the browser might be important. So Mozilla Inc. forged Firefox from the Netscape code base and built a developer ecosystem with an open API that allowed other developers to develop plug-ins. It was “The Field of Dreams.” Build it and they will come, and come they did. Indeed the developer ecosystem had me believing, for a time, that Firefox would never be caught.

Most people who cared about the quality of the browser gradually migrated to Firefox. But the truth is that most people don’t care much about the quality of the browser – which is why Internet Explorer maintained its market lead, even though it was clearly inferior.

In 2004, I migrated to the Mac, for the sake of productivity. I tried Safari, for a while, but it wasn’t productive and I quickly ditched it in favor of Firefox. At the same time, I set up my own blog and became a web developer. That pretty much ensured I would remain a Firefox user, because Firefox has so many important plug-ins for developers. Game, set and match – I thought.

But two things happened to change this, for me.

1. Apple started to compete with Safari and allowed plug-ins. Apple had concluded, correctly in my view, that it had to compete in the browser market.
2. I became an iPhone user. That made me a de facto Safari user, and if I wanted to have synchronized bookmarks, I’d have to use Safari on the Mac.

So I tried out the idea of using Safari as my main browser and using Firefox for web development only. And that had me investigation the Safari plug-ins. I realised that with the Safari Glim plug-in I had most of the browser functionality I needed. I also preferred the way that bookmarks could be organized on Safari.

The Not So Simple

It is starting to become obvious to me that, as an Apple user, my need for technology that works together trumps best of breed. When I switched to the Mac in 2004, it never occurred to me that Apple would become mainstream. It was clear that Apple had escaped from its “position of irrelevance”, but in those days Microsoft was still utterly dominant and the Mac ran on the Power chip.

Times have changed. Apple is now the dominant provider of computer technology in the US consumer market with over 90% of the market for devices above $1000 dollars. It is building a huge data center for cloud computing (investing $1billion) and it is either about to own the mobile phone market or share it with Google.

I realised, just before Google Chrome appeared, that the browser is really the OS for the cloud. When Google Chrome appeared, it was a confirmation. Google realised:

1. It had to have its own browser.
2. The browser was an OS – hence it had made each browser window a separate executable.

In an effort to gain traction for Google Chrome, it is now advertised on the Google search page. This is the only advert that has ever appeared on that page in Google’s history. And now Google is also opening the browser to plug-ins.

That makes the future of Firefox look pretty dismal to me. As time passes, there will be three big browsers: Safari, Chroma and Internet Explorer.