What Will We Use on June 30, 2011?

From ieteam's flickr stream under Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license, open the code Microsoft, or else...

March 2010 will prove to be a critical month in ending Microsoft’s chances of having majority browser market share. All of the sudden, people world wide will be asking themselves, “What will we use?”

I believe that every person should be free to choose a browser. How did I choose not to use Internet Explorer?

On my first internet computer, I used Mosaic as a web browser in 1993. In the 1990s I also tried AOL’s browser but Netscape Communicator was my favourite. By the end of the decade, I was using Mozilla on Linux causally. Through the mid-2000’s Windows 9x would be my primary desktop where I used Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox until my husband gave me an Apple.

Admittedly, I have not used Opera and Safari since 2003. I was using MacOSX on the desktop at the time and there was no definitive browser king for that platform at the time. I tried Internet Explorer and Firefox for the Mac too. As I recall, I ditched Opera because its no-cost product was Adware. Commercials would display in a panel taking up valuable screen real-estate and bandwidth. On that system, Safari was my favourite browser for a few months because it was the only one with tab support. Soon after, Firefox released tab support and I was back home with the Netscape/Mozilla based browsers. There were no features with Internet Explorer worth holding my attention. For the most part since 2005, I have faithfully using Firefox.

I do want to tip my hat to two other browsers: Safari and Opera.

Apple products, Safari is no exception, have aesthetics in mind. I’m sure some people appreciate its integration with Itunes. Due to it’s lack of Linux version, however, I have not even tried the Apple browser since 2005 when my MacOSX system died. Even so, I understand why people enjoy Safari. While the entire Safari browser is not open source, the core components known as Webkit are open source. have been re-implemented as Konquerer and Epiphany by KDE and GNOME. Quite honestly, I wonder if these browsers are mistaken for Safari in market share counters. Either way, Apple benefits from the code they do write and the code they did not directly sponsor to make the Safari product.

Are you paying attention Microsoft? Since you do not sell Internet Explorer as a product, why do you hold onto the code? Learn from your competitor Apple. This is how you can leverage open source to maintain relevance now that your browser is no longer holding the majority of market share.

Microsoft does not have a monopoly in the proprietary browser space. Opera, the browser that I have not as much as blinked at since 2003 is alive and well. Apparently, they are the fastest mobile web browser – a market where Microsoft suffers. Business at Opera is good since they have figured out how to monetize. Also paying the bills for Opera is Nintendo who have partnered web browsing product for Wii and DSi called the Internet Channel. While Microsoft makes console browsing difficult, Nintendo keeps their customers happy  Too bad for Microsoft who can not get past the vaporware stage when it comes to launching their own portable game system, let alone porting IE for it.

While Microsoft is teasing us with the idea that they MIGHT think about working with open web standards when they release IE9, Opera has been pushing for open standards for quite some time now. Recently, the Opera folks have gstreamer and promoting .ogg which is a huge win for anyone who believes in free content.

Seriously, Microsoft, people do not prefer your browser. This has been true for years. Web developers don’t want to support IE6 as of last March. They’ve banded together to bring down IE6 and now Microsoft has to listen. With end-of-life as of June 2010, Microsoft can no longer count IE6 as part of this market share. Even with NetApplications which continues to claim majority market share for IE, take out the IE6/5 and Microsoft only has 36.09% browser market share. Users will not upgrade from IE6 to another Microsoft product. Your market share tanks at the rate of 3% a quarter. Now that Europe is given a choice, Microsoft does not have a prayer of holding onto significant browser market share. Its all over this March for Microsoft web browsers, Google said so.

Whatever Microsoft ends up doing about the browser, all I can say is, “it is your funeral.”

Come June 30, 2011, Microsoft will lack Office Suite and Operating System market share.

The French roll down the Champs-Élysées with Thunderbird in their arsenal

We have only 575 days until Microsoft’s market share crumbles. Some may call me crazy since even more favorable market share counters like w3counter list Linux market share hovering close to 2% and MacOSX close to 7.5%. Why do I maintain big and bold claim that Nick will pay me $20 when Microsoft no longer has majority market share as soon as two summers from now?

Nick is scared he will lose the $20. It’s true. He has emailed me privately to try to back-out of the bet. The game has been changed by Google’s ChromeOS.  With a fast power-on to browser promise, ChromeOS is going to completely destroy the paradigm of what a computer really is.

All sorts of software-as-a-service applications will be at your finger tips in seconds after sitting down in front of your ChromeOS system. Meanwhile, Windows 7 will make minutes feel like an eternity in comparison while installing those updates before you are even allowed to login.

But what will be the “killer application”  that makes everyone drop exactly what they are using an go ChromeOS? Everybody just wants to get to the top three internet websites we all use now.

1. Google for search, Google docs, and gmail.
2. Facebook for social networking and games.
3. Yahoo! for search, mail, games, news, and flickr.

Nick fears that the Internet itself will be the killer app to bring Microsoft to tremble.

A killer application makes everyone drop the tool that they are using because another brand’s troll brings a more attractive results. Everyone could see why 8-bit gaming was more fun than Atari’s games with Ninendo released Super Mario Brothers, the most sold game record for over 15 years. It caused people to not care if they owned a gazillion Atari cartridges already, Nintendo was where all of the serious gamers were. Then, everyone wanted Mario and Nintendo-branded games, even those who owned zero home video game consoles. Nick fears that everyone will want ChromeOS and Linux systems in order to get to the internet faster than what Microsoft can offer.

The truth of the matter is Gandhi-Con4 has already started.  Brazil, the 10th largest world economy and growing, dumped Microsoft in favor of Linux years ago in a desire for transparency and has been tickeled pink ever since. The French Army just quit Outlook in favor of the open source email client, Thunderbird. It does not stop there, remember, countries in every corner of the world have ordered One-Laptop-Per-Child netbooks that run Linux. Tax-payers of the world will see this trend and get sick and tired of seeing that Microsoft is on their corporate welfare dole.

With killer applications abound, Microsoft will not hold majority market share come June 30, 2011.

The short answer is that it is the default search engine of Internet Explorer. This outage made people realize, at least for 40 minutes, that there are tools out there other than Microsoft.

The claim that Microsoft has majority market share within the browser market is a myth that I have been silently collecting data to debunk. In this post I will reveal some of the reasons I see this as true and discuss the Bing/Internet Explorer market share connection. When you ask people what is the best browser, people seem to vote for Firefox hands-down. Yet, month after month, browser market share reports come out and the results are all over the charts but always in favour of Internet Explorer. The Counter reports just shy of 70%. W3counter reports just a little north of 51%. Meanwhile, “Market Share” by Net Applications reports 63.63% for November yet it has been shedding 1% for many months now. The Counter, W3Counter, and Market Share by Net Applications are analytics services that tell website owners who is visiting their site.

Quick tanget and un-paid endourcement…

Only W3Counter offers this service cost-free as only as you have only one site to watch that get less than 5,000 page views a day. Since W3counter is so accessible to anybody with a website, I declared W3Counter the official market share report of this blog. I was so impressed that I opted to pay for their pro $39.95 per 6 month account even though I already pre-paid for two years of Google Analytics. I prefer the way that W3Counter parses the data for me and how it integrates well with Wordpress, the open source blogging software that runs whatwillweuse.com. If you are using anything else other than W3Counter, please give them a try.

OK, back to Internet Explorer and Bing.

A common market share assertion I hear when it comes to operating system and web browser market share is “Microsoft’s market share is high because that is what came with the computer and people do not switch due to interia.”

People just use what is there. To a certain extent, I will have to agree with that point. But if most people just used what Microsoft put in front of them, I would expect far more than 8% search market share out of Bing, the default search on Internet Explorer. Yahoo! Fiance reports that Bing’s market share is shrinking. Why would people choose to not use a product that they did not have to pay for and is delivered to them from the very first time they turn on their computer?

Change is risky and fearsome, especially those new to computer. Despite the fact that Internet Explorer 6 is an eight years old browser, 12.57% of the web browsing population still uses it. That is why Internet Explorer 6 has one thing going for it though, those with Windows XP have had it installed by default. A Vista system that keeps up with patches runs Internet Explorer 8 and this is why it has a respectable market share at 21.21%. Meanwhile there are 17.36 running Internet Explorer 7. I do not know how Microsoft can deliver a competitve free as in cost product while maintaining all of these versions. Even though Microsoft is working on releasing Internet Explorer 9, they are obligated to continue to support Internet Explorer 6,  a product. Together these numbers add up to 51.14% although only 8 percent, and shrinking, are using IE browser’s default search engine.

I assert three things given the interita theory…

Go Chrome

1. Microsoft Internet Explorer users are primarily using Google and Yahoo! instead. When they visit http://www.google.com they are greeted with an invitation to download Chrome. At least 2% will take Google up on the offer and push Internet Explorer below 50% in less than three months.

2. Perhaps 8% bing usage is a reflection of how many people prefer Microsoft’s products, given the choice. Maybe these Internet Explorer users are small businesses who lack full time IT staff who have permission to install software like web browsers. They may use Internet Explorer in the office because they have to but at home they use Firefox because they want to. Web analytics services that release market share reports will give more merit to the 8 hours of the day that people have opportuntiy to use the browser at their desk instead of the 3 hours of the day they might be able to use their browser at home. This would also explain why people overwhelmingly vote for Firefox when asked about their browser of choice yet market share reports continute to favour Internet Explorer.

3. Those 8% loyal Microsoft customers saw Microsoft not deliver a service that they are pouring millions of dollars in American TV ads to support. They were left asking themselves the question, “what will we use?” and the answer, according to Internet Explorer and Bing, was Yahoo!

Come February 28, 2010, Microsoft will no longer have browser market share.

Yesterday when I got home from the office supply store, my husband asked, “Do you want to go to the mall?” This time we went to South Hills Village Mall which is not the same mall where I picked up my Droid. Just three weeks ago, my Droid was purchased one day after its release. My husband lovingly realizes that I am thrilled by gadgets as some girls would be thrilled by jewellery and agreed to make it my birthday present. I am still wowed by the Droid. My husband suggested that we go to the Verizon store to see if there were any Droid accessories available. They were sold out. Within line of site to the Verizon store there is a Droid display which will be staffed every holiday weekend. Yes. A whole display just for one telephone product. There were many people who stopped by to play with the many Droids on display but all but one booth employee were too shy to pose as I excitedly took a photo with my Droid. The picture you see in this post was immediately uploaded to facebook and flickr.com. No need to sync the phone with my desktop at home. This is when I realized that I was already living in the cloud.
Cloud computing that is. Google stores my calendar and contacts so I do not need to worry about backing that up to my PC. Flickr.com, a Yahoo! site, stores my photos. Facebook makes it crazy easy to share my picture that I just took on my phone with all my friends… all of this without leaving the mall. The Droid is not exactly forthcoming about being a product built on Linux and to some, this is a good idea. Still, if they would mention Linux in even a quarter of their advertising and posters, they would be by far the single marketing campaign of Linux product: far beyond the tux500. Google, Motorola, and Verizon have marketed the Droid phone as the anti-iPhone. In one TV commercial they pointed out that Google encourages open development for its “market” of apps. This is important because it allows and even encourages individuals and even competitors like Yahoo! to make applications for the Android platform. Why not go on to boast that they are built on the stability of an 18-year old operating system called Linux? The power of the Android Linux open platform is the whole power behind DroidDoes. Think that this open source mobo-jumbo can not effect the consumer, why in the world won’t Apple let Google implement voice search? Anyhow, Android Linux phones will be holiday gift giving favourite. Want your own Droid? Get it dropped straight to your back yard. My mother has already bought a phone, the Android-based Moment because she is a loyal Sprint customer. I played with it for 5 minutes and it had many of the Droid features but it was slow in comparison. Mom still intends on buying two more Moments for her sister and her brother-in-law.

At least in one corner of the South Hills Village Mall, Microsoft lacks majority market share on November 28, 2009.

A "Demotivational Poster" for Microsoft: "Regrets Those were the droids you were looking for"

So what do you have to say for yourself Microsoft?

As Chairman, Bill Gates stayed pretty silent on the Android issue at the November 19, 2009 stockholders meeting. Steve Ballmer, the current CEO of Microsoft, decided to discuss the issue instead.

“We have greater market share to Google Android. Our objective is to have a leading position among these competitors,” Mr. Ballmer said.

Well, when we have the 4th quarter numbers for SmartPhone market-share, I believe that the Linux-based phone share will be above Microsoft. I do not even think that Nick would bet me another $20. Oh, by the way, Nick has an Android phone. He has been using it since June 2009.

Mr. Ballmer also boldly made another ten year prediction on November 19, 2009.

“When we meet back here in 10 more years, we will look back and say, ‘Wow, wasn’t technology really primitive in 2009? Computers didn’t recognize our speech, they didn’t recognize our gestures .. we didn’t have instantaneous access to the world’s information, we still used pen and paper.’ … Microsoft is investing to be at the forefront of these changes.”

Sorry, Microsoft, you blew it. The Droid already does all that thanks to Google. These were the droids we were looking for.

You had all of the resources to make it happen in 1999:

• You had three of your founders as the richest men in the world. The MSFT stock had peaked at $119 (US $60.928 adjusting for splits) that year. If the 3 billion in research was not enough, you could have found the money somewhere. Now you are only about half of the company value you were ten years go. Where did all the money go? You still do not have a competitive product to show for it. Pink will not pan out. Vaporware is the kindest way to put it. Your own employee put it much more harshly. Success can not be bought.
• You had over ten years between Mr. Gates’ June 15, 1999 testimony and November 6, 2009 Droid release date. Time was on your side as you were already a giant name in computing when Google was a start-up under your radar.
• You had just secured over a hundred licensing agreements for all sorts of “intelligent devices” like personal digital assistants.
• Your company head-count has doubled over the past ten years yet suffers from a brain drain of engineering talent according to this another anonymous Microsoft employee.

How did you let a couple of kids from Stanford who just announced their little search company start-up in the summer of June 1999 beat you to your own Congressional promise?

You a great excuse: you were in court the entire time.

First you had to convince the Unitied States Department of Justice that you were not being monopolistic when it comes to the desktop operating system and web browser. You sited Apple, Linux, and Netscape as competitors in this space. You lost but later you settled with the United States while litigating Netscape to death. Your 750 million settlement with AOL/Netscape bought you browser market share. Even though you supposedly out of court by 2003, you were funding SCO in hopes of killing Linux. Now that SCO is bankrupt, you are busy defending your office suite in court with the Word patent suit and Novell is still suing you over Word Perfect. Do you still find it profitable to sue smaller companies that use Linux in their talking-devices based on the Linux kernel like the TomTom?

You have failed in court.

You fail to profit.

You fail to buy your competitor, Yahoo!

Your corporate ally, Best Buy, is tanking too.

The ultimate problem for you, Microsoft, is that you can not buy and/or sue open source out of business. Sourceforge does not even scratch the surface at 32 million visitors monthly.That’s right are are millions of us who passionately support non-proprietary software that we use. Is that why you have sponsored the open source census? Face it: you can not innovate faster than open source either. With 2 million of user/developer accounts on Sourceforge alone, your 93,000 person company seems really small. PCWorld asks: Has Microsoft Lost the War against Open Soruce? The answer is yes. Some say you died in 2005.

No matter how you look at it, the facts remain. You lost…

• The kernel behind Google Android phones like the Droid is Linux.
• Netscape is now the open source browser Firefox. There have been over 400 million downloads since I made the bet with Nick in June 2009.
• Sun Microsystems, one your targets via SCO suits, is still sponsoring Open Office. In a few short months, you will have lost majority market share to the Open Office suite.
• The Google/Ubuntu hybrid web-optimized Linux system called ChromeOS will hit your operating system, browser, and office suite market share hard.

Think your cloud computing product, “Azure”, can help you? Your lack of attention to high performance computing has sunk your top500.org market share down to an embarrasing 1%. Why should the world trust your ability to perform under a cycle renting paradigm?

It is all over. You failed your users, your government, and your former CEO’s vision. Your market share is tanking and will be less than half by June 30, 2011. Nick will pay me $20. This personal wager made at the South East LinuxFest in June 2009 has enough interest to attract over 12,000 readers in just a few months. A world with significantly less Microsoft is afoot and this website gives people a forum to talk about it.

This is the beginning of the end for you Microsoft.

“On June 30, 2011, Microsoft will lack majority market share,” says Beth Lynn Eicher.

For a few months I have considered what my next phone will be. I knew that it had to be either Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint since other carriers do not have a good reputation for quality coverage in my area.

I also knew I wanted a SmartPhone which gave me several operating systems options (in order of 2qtr market share):
A. Nokia which runs a platform which is striving to be open source: Symbian OS, AT&T was the only carrier for them but I did not see any for sale at the store I visited.
B. Blackberry which runs the closed-source platform: RIM, was available in many models and carriers but the lack of availability of 3rd party applications kept me away.
C. iPhone which runs the BSD-based platform produced by Apple has a significant amount of popularity due to the App Store. I passed because I did not want something that was defective by design.
D. Microsoft Mobile based phones are around but decreasing in relevance. The reviews totally tank it.
E. Android is an Linux-based operating system from Google which is the most open Linux-based commercially available phone on the market is the one I picked because it seemed to have the most welcoming developer community.
F. Palm is currently in transition to the Linux-based OS called “Palm PRE.” I doubt that the developer community will keep up with the Android and iPhone communities.

On Saturday November 7, I went to the poshest shopping mall around town to make sure that my options were the best that money could buy. Let’s face it, I am a Linux enthusiast and the idea of buying a Linux phone had me thrilled. Decked out in my Google Open Source Programs Office t-shirt, I knew I was going Droid. The Motorola “Droid” model is the newest Android phone for the Verizon 3G Network. None the less, I had intended to go to all three stores: Verizon, AT&T and Sprint but there was not a Sprint store in that mall. At the AT&T store I observed no Microsoft phones but several iPhones for sale. There were not any customers there beside me at the AT&T store yet nobody tried to sell me an iPhone. It is like nobody cares about the iPhone anymore. Then I quickly moved onto Verizon store where there was a line of people just to touch one of the two Android phones they had on display. There was one Windows phone on display but everybody ignored it despite it being right next to the Droid. Since I already have a contract with Verizon, the process was simple. I gave my phone number and account PIN to the sales clerk and the Droid was mine. As an added bonus, the clerk explained that I would pay less than I was paying for my monthly service because I wanted to use gmail instead of a Microsoft Exchange email account. While my Droid was configured for my account, I continued to browse the store and ended up buying a mifi too which is a portable access point that does not care what operating system I use.

The Droid itself is amazing. What really knocks my socks off is the phone is tied in with Google Voice so I can make all of the calls I want for free without going into my calling minutes. It also ties in well with all sorts of software-as-a-service websites, not just Google’s cloud.

As I was using the Droid, it reminded me of Bill Gates’ Congressional testimony ten years ago….

I’ve waited for ten years for Bill Gates and Microsoft to deliver the innovation that was promised in the “not too distant future.” Ten years and 3 billion dollars later you have no product to show for it, Microsoft. I bought a product produced by Google, a company that will destroy Microsoft’s market share now through June 30, 2011. Should I wait for Microsoft to catch up? I am sorry Mr. Gates, I am afraid I can’t do that. I’ve already gone for the 2010 Linux Odyssey.

I continued to use PalmOS internet-less but was quickly bored. Then I moved onto the Sharp Zaurus, a Linux based PDA. With a $100 CF 802.11b card, the Zaurus could browse the web on a color screen as long as I was somewhere with a hotspot. But, in circa 2005, quality open wireless networks were few and far between.

To me, the Zaurus was just a toy that was tiding me over to that always connected voice-activated pocket computer Bill Gates promised to sink three billion dollars into producing. Sure, Microsoft had Windows Mobile 5 phones in 2005 but they really were more for corporate people who use Exchange email. Going with a glorified WindowsCE on a phone was not appealing as I had already experienced what that platform had to offer back in 1998. Back in those days, BlackBerry phones were eating up the corporate emailing phone market share keeping Microsoft uncompetitive.

There was only one pocket-internet device in the mid-2000’s that attempted to appeal to the gadget-geek in me: the PalmOS-based Treos. In January 2007, I bought a Treo 650 since I had heard horror stories on the just released iPhone. By and large, I was happy with the Blazer web browser, Google Maps for PalmOS, and an mp3 player. Sadly in January 2008, I dropped my phone cracking the screen. Wanting to stick my carrier, Verizon, I upgraded to a Treo 700p.

Until ten days ago, I was a faithful PalmOS-based Treo user. Recently, I got in the mood for something shinny and new. Google had just launched the Droid with Verizon and I was there day two on the market to pick mine up. I thought it was just another phone upgrade, instead I found that pocket voice activated information system that Bill Gates, the United States Congress, and I have been waiting for ten years now.

Microsoft had failed to implement their former CEO’s Congressional promise. Nor could Microsoft hold significant smartphone market share. In fact, Microsoft’s market share is less than 10% and on the decline. Only one brilliant visionary present at the 1999 Tech Summit who correctly predicted where all this was going and profited heavily from it: Vice President Al Gore invested in Google shortly afterward.

Mr. Gore, if you read this blog, would you kindly tell us what will we use on June 30, 2011?

Like Bill Gates, I too coveted mobile hardware that I could connect to all of my favorite online resources. Ten years ago I was low on cash since I was a college junior who was still living with Mom. At the end of that summer, I bought my first Linux desktop with what little I could earn from the internship. Surely I thought that Mr. Gates would beat me to it, with the 3 billion he swore he would spend on making such a device.

Two years later, I went back to full time work. Then I decided to buy the best solution that I could afford: a Samsung SCH 3500. This thing had a “microbrowser.” Microbrowser did not even begin to describe the experience of trying to experience the world wide web via a 1″ monochrome LCD. Most websites, were downright painful to use but Yahoo! had made their search, maps, and email usable: as long as you could tolerate numberpad word-bubblesort text entry.  The data was crazy expensive too with no monthly quota. The cool thing is that you could tether it with a Handspring Visor with PalmOS. When the Samsung and the Handspring were connected, you could use the phone as a serial modem to dial out to any dialup isp. On the wonderful 3 inch monochrome Handspring screen, I could browse the web and even IRC with with the sudo-handwriting PalmOS Graffiti. Sure it was ugly but it was bleeding edge. Microsoft was no where to be found in this market space in 2002. Yahoo! was doing software as a service on the mobile platform long before Google was even dreaming about it.

I really loved this hardware. Sadly the Samsung died in 2004 and I moved on to other phones, continuing to covet the dream of voice-activated computing which would give me access to all of my information in my pocket.

Five years after Bill Gates’ fateful promise, Microsoft still lacked any market in software-as-a-service voice-activated pocket computing area. Likewise, on June 30, 2011, Microsoft will lack majority market share.

On June 15, 1999 Bill Gates testified before the United States Congress via the Joint Economic Committee at an event called “The High-Tech Summit.” The propose of this event was for the Congress to learn about where the future of computing was going. At the time, Senator Rick Santorum was the Joint Economic Committee. Senator Satorum invited me and four other student interns at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center to prepare questions for Mr. Gates. At Mr. Gates’ request, we prepared ten questions in advance in which Mr. Gates and/or his staff would select. I specifically recall that there were questions that mentioned Linux but those were not selected. Instead, Mr. Gates was most interested in telling the American government and people how Microsoft was going to be a major player the future of computing. The full transcript is available at microsoft.com.

Ten years later I find something particularly insightful that Mr.
Gates predicted…

“Wherever you are, you’ll be able to access your own digital
dashboard — the set of information that you care about on any screen,
from a PC to that small pocket device. Microsoft and thousands of other
companies are advancing the software that makes this possible. We’ll
spend next year about $3 billion on research and development. One day
in the not-too-distant future that software will allow computers to
see, to listen, and to speak. At home or in the office, you’ll be able
to talk to your PC, to dictate a document or to simply ask for the
information that you care about.”

On November 7, 2009, I purchased that very device that finally lives up to the promise of true hand-held voice-activated computing which delivers all of the information I care about: I bought a Verizon Google Android Motorola phone.

Twelve years after Bill Gates’ fateful testimony at the High-Tech Summit, Microsoft will lack majority market share.