Happy Customers Don't Change Their Web Browsers

Many people underestimate just how "sticky" Web browsers are for most people, and how tough it will be to pry hundreds of millions of internet users from their reliance on Internet Explorer, which comes bundled into over 80 percent of the consumer PC's that are sold.

Yesterday, my colleague Kevin Maney wrote:

Chrome will highlight one factor in the browser wars: There really isn't much of a barrier to people switching browsers. We don't pay anything for a browser, or store personal information on them or do anything that makes a particular browser "ours." There's not steep learning curve. You can discard one browser and start using another about as easily as you can change the brand of frying pan you use. Firefox already opened that hole in Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Chrome will drive a truck through it.

Kevin makes a good point, in the abstract. But when was the last time you changed your brand of frying pan? As long as the most popular brand of frying pan works reliably -- and doesn't spontaneously explode -- why would anyone change brands?

Google (GOOG) enjoys a similar sort of stickiness with its dominant search engine: It's familiar, it works well, and it doesn't break. Web users favor IE because it's what they know and use everyday. As one tech analyst told me yesterday, "People typically don't switch browsers unless they are really unhappy with the one they are using. Happy customers don't move."

I see no evidence that the hundreds of millions of Internet Explorers users are unhappy enough to switch. If they were, they would have moved to Firefox.

Web browsers are designed to be transparent -- a means to an end -- and as long as they stay out of users' way while enabling people to easily navigate the Web, I don't see why people should switch from what they know and have relied on.

Comments

[John C. Lee:]

We're all creatures of habit. Even with Vista out, I'm a die-hard XP user. The changes will take place slowly, but people will use what they're only comfortable with...and that's probably something that they're using right now.

2008 Sep 04 05:03 AM

[AlanHHI:]

I agree with you, and I kept with IE for years. However, recently IE6 and IE7 were blowing up daily, half the time because of problems with Flash. That fits my definition of "broken".
Perhaps this problem has been fixed, but I don't know. I finally switched to Firefox and I've been happily using it ever since.

2008 Sep 04 08:22 AM

[Scott Berry:]

I agree with you, and violently disagree with Maney. People *do* customize and personalize their browsers. My Firefox contains login and password info in the cache for dozens of sites, and I also have a favorite theme/skin and 10-12 extentions that I refuse to live without--many of which perform functions only now being touted in Chrome or IE8. Changing would be a big hassle and would thus require a compelling reason. Chrome doesn't qualify.

2008 Sep 04 09:07 AM