Browser Wars II
Source: http://research.saugatech.com/fr/researchalerts/466RA.pdf
Author: BRUCE GUPTILL
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Saugatuck sees the following factors at work behind the resurgent browser aggression:
- The browser is the client. With SaaS and Web 2.0, the browser becomes, in effect, the client software. Control of the user interface enables control of the user interaction and relationship. The browser provider thus plays a strategic role in the adoption of SaaS, Web 2.0, and Cloud Computing.
- Advertising revenue. Browser vendors are at the center of the search engine wars, which are currently targeting web-based, search-engine-driven advertising revenues.
- Simple forward progression of IT. All IT, especially software, gets more powerful and more complex over time. Users expect and demand more from even the simplest technologies over time. Vendor/user relationships depend upon this. Browser providers want and need to protect these relationships.
- Virtualization of IT. More sophisticated browsers can provide server and OS transparency or independence for SaaS or web-based applications. As users and SaaS providers increasingly adopt various forms of virtualization and multiple OSes (e.g., Windows, Linux, etc.), the browser can provide compatibility for a wide range of web-based applications (i.e., SaaS). One reason browsers have to become more powerful and sophisticated is the advancement of IT virtualization. The user infrastructure is becoming its own cloud, extending to and including multiple outside clouds.
- Device transparency. Functionally-rich browsers can enable a single version of a web-based application to support devices ranging from varying displays on PC, to PDAs, to smart phones, using different OSes and with vastly different capabilities need to be able to interact/interoperate with these multiple clouds in order for users to do business.
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