I stated why I think Safari’s market will come from Firefox: “these users have already shown the knowledge, desire, and ability to switch.”

As you alluded to, there are tens of millions of users still in IE 6, and even those in IE 7 are probably there because it was an automatic update. The vast majority of these people aren’t going anywhere, so the target market for Safari, Firefox, etc. is the same relatively small subset of users.

You’re right that Safari reviews are mixed, as are most beta reviews. I have my own review on this site and it’s mixed, too. But the upshot is Safari is nice, and assuming the bugs are quashed will give Firefox a run for its money. We disagree on IE 7, though, I think it was a big disappointment. Better than 6, but that ain’t saying much.

As for being a duopoly, Lilly is the one who brought it up, apparently to scare everyone, but the fact is with over 93 percent of the market, yes, MS and Mozilla are a duopoly. You can disagree, but I have no idea why. They sure seem to fit the definition of the word to me. I don’t mind so much, and only brought it up because Lilly doesn’t have a problem with a duopoly as long as Mozilla is one of the two companies involved. Apparently this is because they are benevolent, while Apple wants to rule the world. A silly notion.

I refuse to get scared by the “large corporation” argument. It’s BS. Apple has not shown any propensity to avoid open standards or to incorporate their own proprietary ones, whereas Microsoft’s entire history has shown that that is their primary business plan.

These kinds of “scare monger” articles are pointless and, frankly, smack of either desperation or at the very least a knee-jerk reaction to a lack of ideas. Mozilla should have flipped Apple the finger and listed all the reasons why Firefox is not planning to give ground to Safari. Instead they painted a picture that I guess is supposed to scare us into avoiding Safari. Aside from being groundless and unconvincing, it was simply a bad approach.

Some IE users are switching to Firefox, Opera, and soon to Safari, because they are dissatisfied with their default Windows browser. Without competition, Microsoft ceased releasing updates to IE, the aging IE6 was not standard compliant, did not offer tabbed browsing, integrated search, web feeds, a pop-up blocker, type-ahead find, extensions, etc. Besides, it was plagued with security problems. Some of these problems have been addressed with the release of IE7 (at last!), proof that alternative browsers provided tough competition for IE.

There is some rivalry between Opera and Firefox (who ‘invented’ tabbed browing? etc.) but both are gaining market share from IE. Opera is better than Explorer since day one, however Opera Software is a small company, they don’t have the marketing clout to gain a lot of mind or market share. On the other hand Opera users are very dedicated, just like Mac users. The Mozilla Foundation is a not-for-profit corporation, the Foundation has gained a lot of recognition thanks to their community-based approach.

Where does Safari stand in this big picture? Apple is a well-oiled marketing machine, they can win some market share if the product is any good: fast rendering, standard compliance, relatively secure… Mac users will adopt Safari/Win at work just out of loyalty, if they are forced to use Windows all day long. Opera and Firefox users don’t really need a better browser, they already have one. Some of them will give Safari a chance, though, but I don’t think it will amount to much. Even IE7 is kinda okay-ish, Safari/Windows should be the best web browser by a wide margin to win over these users.

And this is not the case. The first reviews are mixed, it crashes a lot (well, this is a beta release), it looks out of place on Windows (alien look and feel, font rendering, different keyboard shortcuts, etc.) a bit like Firefox on a Mac. It will take some getting used to. At the moment the support is far from great (Typepad, etc.), fortunately more and more web developers will test their sites on Safari. Of course, there will be security issues, like for any other Windows web browser. All in all Safari/Win is not significantly better than say, Firefox/Win.

Tens of millions of people are still using IE6 on a daily basis, Opera, Firefox and Safari must target this gigantic pool of users to gain market share. The low hanging fruits are on Windows XP, as they transition to Windows Vista it will be a bit harder to get them to switch. Unless Opera 10/Firefox 3/Safari 3 are significantly better than IE7. Anyway, the competition is heating up, Microsoft will have to work harder going forward. No more slacking.

I don’t agree that “Microsoft and Mozilla are [a] duopoly,” the web browser scene is really rich. Firefox is a distant second to Explorer, there are other alternatives like Opera and the revived Netscape Navigator 9.0 on Windows/OSX, KDE’s Konqueror 3.5, Apple’s Safari, Camino 1.5, Shiira 2.0, OmniWeb 5.5 on Mac OS X… Their market share may be small but these are modern, standard compliant browsers, based on the Gecko rendering engine, or WebKit (or Opera’s own engine). The goal of the Mozilla Foundation is not world domination, they want to keep the web an open platform, they are committed to interoperability.

During the first browsers war there was a proprietary duopoly, the old Netscape vs Microsoft. As a result the web was fragmented, some sites were ‘optimised’ for (worked better on) IE or Netscape Navigator. Lilly’s fears are largely unfounded in my opinion, Safari is standard compliant, etc. but two large corporations in control… it brings back bad memories from the 1990’s.

“Mozilla really should have tried selling their product” yet I agree with John Lilly when he says that Safari won’t replace all web browsers except IE. No one asked for a slide without Microsoft, where does this idea come from? The second graphic should read: “Safari / Other” (for Opera + Firefox + MSIE + whatever), and not “Safari / Internet Explorer.” As is, it looks like Jobs’ big dream is to kill the alternative browsers. I wouldn’t mind if it was Fake Steve Jobs joking at Firefox’s expense (”All your market share belongs to us, puny freetards!”, or something along those lines), but it was the real Steve, or was it? Apple is a great company but sometimes Jobs’ cockiness is annoying, don’t be shocked or surprised when he takes a shot in the nads. :-D