Posts from Web browser

Browser Loyalty (or not)

I guess this weekend will be google analytics weekend, given my post yesterday and today. In light of the rumors that Facebook may purchase the Opera browser, I got to thinking about how quickly browser market shares move. If the AVC blog audience is a good sample, then the answer is pretty quickly.

Here's the breakout of browser market share on AVC in the month of May 2006:

Browser share 2006
IE was dominant with over 60% of the AVC audience using it in May 2006. Firefox was coming on strong and Safari was tiny with about 5% of the users.

In just two years, the landscape had shifted rapidly.

Browser share may 2008
In May 2008, Firefox was ascendant and over half of AVC readers used it. IE was still popular and Safari had doubled its share among AVC readers.

Two years later, in May 2010, the market was shifting again.

Browswer share 2010
Firefox was still on top but was falling and Chrome was taking share from it. Safari had doubled again, and IE usage was in freefall.

And fast forward to today, we see a different story again.

Browser share 2012
Chrome is by far the most popular browser among AVC readers. Safari and Firefox usage has declined a bit. And IE contnues its decline.

All of this share shifting has happened in the relatively short timeframe of six years. There is apparently very low loyalty to browsers in the AVC community. I suspect our crew here is more likely to try something new and shift than the broader Internet, but even so, this is something to think about if owning a browser is part of your lockin strategy. Apparently that doesn't work too well.

UPDATE:

There was a question about OS market share. This is what the current OS market share on AVC looks like:

OS market share 2012

#Web/Tech

Fun Feature Friday: Clik This

I know its supposed to be Fun Friday, but this is going to be a Fun Feature Friday.

Yesterday our portfolio company Kik launched a new mobile app/platform called Clik.

Clik is really just one simple feature, implemented as a mobile platform that any developer will be able to leverage via a set of tools that are coming soon. And that feature is “point your smartphone at a browser that is showing a QR code and take control of the screen with your phone.” Sounds strange the first time you hear it, but give it a try and you’ll see what I mean. It’s really powerful.

There’s one more aspect of this feature which makes it even more fun. If your friends also have the Clik app on their phones (iPhone and Android to start), they can also take control of the screen and you can play games, play videos, play music, show pictures, etc with each other using your phones as controllers. It’s fun to imagine the new kinds of games that can be built with this platform.

So do me a favor, download Clik onto your smartphone, fire up a web browser, point it to clickthis.com, and then take over your computer with your phone. You’ll see the power of the platform right away.

If you are a developer and want to build something on top of the Clik platform, its really simple. No mobile development required. All web development and pretty easy to boot. If you are interested in learning more, email the Clik Platform team and they will be happy to explain how it works.

#Web/Tech

HTML5 Mobile Apps

I saw two HTML5 apps yesterday. One running in my Android browser. The other running in the iPad browser. They looked and worked exactly like their mobile app counterparts. It was a mind opening moment.

There still are issues. When I went to show one of the HTML5 mobile apps later, my mobile data connection wasn't there and I couldn't load it in my Android browser. But a friend told me you could cache all the elements, including the database, on the phone and deliver an offline experience in HTML5 in the browser.

I've always disliked the idea that we have to download apps on our phones when the apps we use on the web are loaded in the browser on demand. But I've accepted the mobile app paradigm as something we will be living with for the next five years.

I'm not sure it's five years anymore.



#Web/Tech

Is The Web Dead?

My friend Howard Lindzon DM'd me on Twitter last night. He asked if I would agree to be interviewed on Skype next week on a series he is doing titled "The Web Is Dead." When I saw the DM, I shuddered. My good friend the web is dead? No way.

But then I thought about a conversation I had with Saul Klein when I was in London a few weeks ago. Saul told me he is using the web a lot less and his iPad and iPhone a lot more.

I don't personally have that experience. I use the web more and more. I've moved most everything I do to the web from desktop apps. And on my Android phone, I mostly use the web browser. I have a few apps, but the browsing experience is so good on Android and so familiar to me. And on the iPad, I mostly use the browser and the Kindle app.

So the web is not dead to me. But if Howard is asking the question and if Saul is a case in point, it is a question we must get our heads around. Our firm invests in web services and they have been very very good to us.

In a board meeting yesterday, the founder said, "everything we do is cloud-based, with an API, and mobile friendly". He did not say "everything we do runs in a browser." So to me that means the Internet and the cloud is more important than ever. But the web browser as a platform may be losing some of its importance as it turns 18 and becomes an adult.

There are some aspects of the web that I will hate to lose. The first and foremost is links. If we are going to retire the web browser some day, we cannot retire links. They are what makes the Internet work. I also will miss the "write once read many" aspect of the web. Sure there are differences between the various web browsers out there but for the most part, when you write a web app it runs on most popular web browsers fairly well. That is very much not the case with all the various mobile environments that are emerging.

I am personally rooting for HTML5 to reverse this trend. But I hear that HTML5 is a few years away from where it can be the platform we all want it to be. I am very curious what the readers of this blog think about that.

As I was writing this post, I realized (courtesy of our portfolio company Zemanta's blogging tool) that Howard was inspired by a Wired piece penned by Chris Anderson called The Web Is Dead. A Debate. I will go read what Chris has to say on this. And most of all, I am curious what all of you think.

#Web/Tech