Progress is good, right?
The New York Times wrote about the return of the browser wars last week. The browser world is getting interesting again; Firefox 3 will be released this month, Microsoft is showing test versions of IE8, and Apple’s Safari is making inroads thanks to the iPhone and their unfortunate decision to push out to Windows users updating their iTunes software.
It’s all interesting, and it’s good for users. But this quote just stopped me in my tracks as I read the article:
“The typical browser for today’s consumer doesn’t look all that different than it did 10 years ago,” said Larry Cheng, a partner at Fidelity Ventures, one of the firms that invested in Flock, a browser start-up. “That is an unsustainable trend that is the launching point for the second browser war, which will not be won by monopolistic muscle but by innovation.”
Unsustainable trend? Why, exactly?
It’s possible that today’s browser looks like 1998’s browser because the fundamental activity - looking at web content - remains the same. Yes, there are more bells and whistles, there’s more interactivity, there are new technologies, but the human activity - allow me to view and interact with a file on a web server somewhere - may be well served by the basic browser concept that’s been around for so long.
This is, by the way, the reason that your car, your toaster, and your toilet also look like they did in 1998, even if they’ve got some new features.
Now, Mr. Cheng’s firm has invested in Flock, so his comment on innovation is a bit self-serving; Flock is doing interesting things integrating social media tools into the browser. They are indeed innovative. It remains to be seen if it’s a form of innovation that the market really wants, but it’s very interesting stuff. I’ve taken it for a test run; I found it intriguing but a bit of a usability nightmare. That’s just my personal reaction, and it should not stop you from checking it out; we will see more attempts to integrate social media technologies into basic applications, and things like Flock are interesting approaches to this.
But innovation does’t matter when it’s happening just because innovation is cool. (It is, of course.) It matters when the results are meaningful to users and to the market.
It does not matter simply because things haven’t changed in ten years.
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Ok, I got my links wrong and there’s no way of editing my comment. Here’s what it should have been:
I agree with the majority of the comments you post on this blog. However, I’m afraid I have to disagree with your closing comments in this one.
Have you used Flock? Have you used Flickr? Have you used Highrise/Basecamp/Backpack? Have you used Piclens? Do you use Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn? Are you aware of Prism?
The web is no longer a place where people go to view web pages and click on hyperlinks. It is a content platform, an application platform, a social networking platform and more.
The web browser is just a User Interface to these services. What the Flock browser does (and other applications out there such as Piclens) is provide alternative User Interfaces to the browser window for web content/applications.
Of course, there are arguments for and against including these alternative UIs within a browser application but however you look at it, the web has progressed since 1998 and the way we interact with it really hasn’t that much.
It is a fundamental shift from the original “page-with-hyperlinks” viewer of the late 90’s to UIs that use the web as a platform.
I didn’t read the original article but imagine that the “unsustainable trend” that Larry Chang refers to is for the browser to continue to offer only a single way to view/consume web content. Not really a trend but I get where he’s coming from.
Hi Russell, thanks for commenting. A badly-formatted tag chopped off part of my post (oops) so unfortunately you didn’t see the closing of it.
You’re absolutely right about that change in the way users interact with web content: it’s no longer passive viewing. However, I’d argue that browsers have evolved along with that, and frankly, the latest release of Firefox is a great tool for using the services you mention.
I think what Flock is doing is interesting; I also found, when I used it for a while, that it wasn’t terribly helpful. I imagine that for a segment of social networking power users it’s very handy. I have a strong, strong preference for extremely clean and uncluttered interfaces (one of the reasons I love BaseCamp, which you mention) and so that was one of my complaints with it.
But what Flock is doing is interesting.
So I’m really taking issue with the idea that browsers have to change just because change is good. In a world where three-quarters of the user base sticks with IE just because it’s there, I’d argue that these are not changes filling a broad need.
That said, I think it’s great that people are experimenting with changing some of the fundamental assumptions of browsing.
Hope that clarifies my point. Thanks for reading and participating.