Browser Wars: Godfather Style

[Saint_Michael 3]

In a recent article by lifehacker.com, they talk about the five best browser on the current market today, of which include Microsoft's Internet Explorer family with the latest being IE8, Mozilla's Firefox Family with the latest Firefox 3, Opera Family with Opera 9.6. The Apple Family with Safari with the Stable 3.2 and rolling out Safari 4 B1, and the Google Family with Chrome with the current version at 2.

 

This sounds like the families from the Godfather movies each vying for power in the criminal underworld, as they are the top five families in the browser mafia. Bare with me as I go with this analogy and I hope you know a little about the Italian mafia work back in the day and on that note I want to rank these Don's in the order of power and age.

 

Capo di tutti i capi (Boss of bosses) This title belongs to the Mosaic web browser because of the fact it was the first browser and on top of that several browsers came from this one, Netscape, Firefox, Internet Explorer. So these three have paid their respects to this browser even though it has long been dead or this case replace by the Netscape Don and then Mozilla Don. However, an Italian mafia never really works that way with family getting the top spot after Capo di tutti i capi is long and dead.

 

That is where Internet Explorer came to power and although it deserves the title of Capo di tutti i capi because it is still the top dog of browsers, I would make the Internet Explorer Family number #2 because of the recent years of losing power to Firefox and Opera with Safari and Chrome fighting among themselves. Of course, within the IE family the top boss has been replace times in 14 years of this family's existence. Of course, IE7 failed horribly at his job and so his younger brother took him out and 8 came to power, however, because of the lack of faith IE7 had, IE6 still has some power left and so I would rank him at #2 with IE7 #3 because of the problems he has cause.

 

Because of the problems with the IE family since 2006, three families were gaining power with one of them losing out and being replaced and eventually being wiped out completely in 2008. In terms of power Netscape was the only competition for the IE family, and even though Netscape came out first 1994 after being born from Mosaic, it would last until Netscape 9 and by them the family within Netscape broke off with most of the family siding with Mozilla and we watch as the Netscape Don lost all its power.

 

Now that we have laid the foundation of the Browser Godfathers in terms of age and of power, the times were changing and its members were growing impatient with its leadership. Especially with IE family and the lack of security it provided, and because of that two families grew into power, Mozilla and Opera. Although they were not considered a threat, Mozilla showed up in 2004, and soon Opera would show up out of nowhere even though this family has been growing since 1994. However, by the time Firefox 2 and Opera 7 came up the ranks in their families, they have taken a great deal out of the IE family; however, Firefox would do the most damage in just 5 years.

 

Now in 2009 IE is losing power and its new leader could be the saving this family and the power it has, but with the connection of Windows slowing breaking apart with the up and coming release of Windows 7. Its with that deal could several hurt this family and give it just enough for Firefox 3.1 or Firefox 4 to take over and lead the five families into the future.

 

What about the other three families in the browser wars? Opera spot is well in place for the time being but if Chrome family heads into the right direction the Opera family could be taking out and be replaced by chrome. As for the Safari family, their number four spot is held in place for now, but once Chrome makes the move, the Safari family will be providing the protection while the other 4 bosses keep battling their wars.

 

So if the numbers are correct, in 3-4 years Firefox Family will be number one, with the IE Family going to number two, and depending on what happens with the Opera and Chrome families, the number three spot will determine the number four spot and the Safari Family will hold its place at number five. That is what will happen for these five families of the browser wars, but who knows the delivery boy could come out of nowhere and knock out the heads of the top families.

[Baniboy 3]

Wow... It's been a long time since I read this much spam at once :DVery interesting piece of spam. But I don't think IE "family" is out yet, although it sucks.It has survived because of all the people that just hadn't even heard the word "browser". Now when those cavemen are getting old and dying evantually, I think people will still use it, many people don't even know how to install a program, even in the younger generations.People are scared they won't learn how to use another browser and they thing they current stinky IE works "just fine" even tho it crashes on every other link you click. Despite that IE is pain in the *bottom* for web designers, it's a totally failed browser, if I could choose now, I would choose Netscape if it had a decent flash engine/whatever. I have had some thinking about why IE doesn't follow the standards, I tried IE8, it didn't either, I didn't find an explanation for it... You would think that people learn from their mistakes wouldn't ya? :DI'm not excited about Google Chrome tho, I don't like selling all my rights to some stupid google, I don't even trust their search engine, since you can buy the "first link" at the search results from google (that's what china did, it hide some anti-communism sites under some official chinese government sites)That's why I use altavista, I don't use other since I don't like all the crappy ads around the search results.But I think firefox will evantually win, and microsoft will stop being a "wannabe good in everything", if they focused on one thing, let's say, operating system, I think they would have great results.SM: it sucks when someone spams doesn't it? :D

Edited March 24, 2009 by baniboy (see edit history)

[rayzoredge 2]

Meh.Firefox users will bash Internet Explorer users. Internet Explorer users will defend their browser because they are most likely M$ fanboys or techies with legitimate supporting arguments for using Internet Explorer... because if you actually are arguing about it, you already exclude yourself from the mass majority that use Internet Explorer for the simple fact that it came preinstalled with Windows. Safari and Opera users will tout their speed superiority. And people like my girlfriend will still use AOL because she's used to it, even though it's garbage, in my opinion.Firefox is great because it has a community that actually continually develops and improves on it. It supports add-ons and lets you customize your browsing experience. I love using it, but I also hate the fact that it takes forever to load and the memory usage that supposedly was fixed back in the day when 3.0 came out. I guess it's pretty typical now to see your web browser take up hundreds of MBs of RAM.Internet Explorer has come a long way, but since it's actually catching up with everyone else and even struggling with other aspects, why move to it? (That's if you've used any of the other "superior" browsers.) I like some of the things that IE8 has introduced, like Web Slices and Accelerators, but personally, I'm good with Firefox and throwing on an add-on or two. The sandbox feature seems pretty darn cool, but again, M$ is playing catchup, as Chrome came out with the concept on inception.I didn't like Chrome when it first came out, and I probably should be giving it a chance now. Back in the day, it was released with a Fisher-Price look to it but I did like the idea of sandboxing each tab as its own process, which is what it has over FireFox. (Sometimes FF likes to crash when I visit certain websites... but since I know it's specific to that website, and since I don't care too much about having to restart my previous session, I live with it.) Maybe I'll give Chrome another go, but as of right now, I'm happy with FF.I've never tried Safari and frankly, I don't have much incentive to. Safari does have its speed going for it, so for simple just-go browsing, I'm sure it's great. But again, I like FireFox.Opera actually seems like a browser that I would try, since reading about it always seems like a positive outlook. There are many in-built features with the browser, and I'm sure that it would be something worth trying out, especially if you want to escape the Internet Explorer default.Overall, I think the only browsers that are worth your time would have to be the ones you can find that you can use happily. I have to admit that Internet Explorer 8 has come a long way (finally), but I guess that I've built enough of a caution to avoid IE as much as possible because of ActiveX as well as the fact that tabbed browsing revolutionized how I surfed the web, which doesn't give me any incentive to move back to IE (or any browser) if FF already has it (along with all the other cool features).

[rayzoredge 2]

Oh, and speaking of Firefox's superiority...

 

 

While looking up stuff for estimation software, I was using Google when I found a site flagged as suspicious by Google.

 

 

Out of curiosity, I decided to go to the site anyway by pasting the URL into the location bar, in which then Firefox 3 warned me of suspicious activity on the site.

 

 

Curious, I decided to do the same thing with IE8 (which I downloaded yesterday).

 

 

I went to Google, searched the same thing, and clicked on the link, which led me to Google’s warning page.

 

 

I ignored it again and pasted the URL into the location bar, which IE let me do without any warning whatsoever, except for the ActiveX/plugin warning that I made default (setting it to let me know when a page was going to execute any scripts or any Flash or ActiveX controls and prompting whether to let it go or not).

 

 

Apparently Microsoft’s anti-phishing/suspicious site index needs improvement… or is non-existent.

 

I know that realistically, this is only one site being cross-checked between browsers, but I just thought it was a funny thing to share, relevant to SM's "browser wars."

Edited March 25, 2009 by rayzoredge (see edit history)