A new round of the perennial browser wars has begun. Google Chrome is the current hands-down victor, but don’t be surprised if that changes. The new battleground is privacy. Google will have to fight hard to retain its majority market share. But will our privacy increase? I doubt it. The reason is a long story.
Current Standings
The main browser contenders are Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari. In May 2019, the worldwide standings on all platforms were Chrome 63%, Safari 16% and Firefox 5%. To a certain extent, those numbers represent the distribution of smartphones. Google Android is the most prevalent and the default browser on Android is Chrome. Safari is the default on Apple iPhones. Firefox trails in part because it is not the default anywhere and users have to take the time and trouble to install it. On desktops and laptops in the US, Chrome still runs laps on Firefox and Safari at 64%. Microsoft Internet Explorer and Edge combined, the defaults on Windows computers, come in around 20%, Firefox and Safari trail at around 8%.
Depending on how much consumers value their privacy, these standings may change in months to come.
Last week, the Washington Post lambasted Google Chrome on privacy. Mozilla Firefox has been touting its security and privacy features regularly for the past few months and they have steadily improved their performance to keep up with Chrome.
History
The war used to be the world vs. Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE). The old battle was fought over performance, features, and standards compatibility. Microsoft in the late 90s and early 2000s was feeling safe in its control of the personal computer market; they took an indifferent stance toward emerging browser standards and chose to go their own way with IE, forcing web site developers to write different codes for IE, while following widely accepted standards for the rest. Most consumers were unaware, but it drove engineers crazy.
Eventually, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari moved ahead of IE. Microsoft, in those days, was complacent on web performance, behind the curve on web security, and fighting anti-monopoly suits. Google, Mozilla, and Apple were striving hard to improve performance, security, and adding features while conforming to standards. As a longtime competitor and partner, I can say that Microsoft engineers are second to none, but they floundered in the browser wars and eventually lost to the contenders. Chrome came off as the big winner by concentrating on performance.
Chrome is still the browser performance champion, but their lead is so small, it’s hard for most users to distinguish between the performance of any of the browsers today. I suspect Microsoft struggles because old IE special features are still required by some important customers, which puts constraints on IE that the other browsers don’t face.
The Privacy Battle
In this battle, Firefox appears to have the high ground. Most of Google’s revenue comes from selling ads that are targeted by the information it collects on the habits of the users of its free services like Google search, Gmail, and Chrome. When Chrome ups its privacy game, Google’s potential corporate revenue goes down. This places Google on a razor edge: abuse privacy and the public will quit using its services; increase privacy and ad-targeting gets fuzzy, which will cause revenues to drop.
Mozilla, as a non-profit, has no direct stake in targeting ads and therefore appears to be free to pursue privacy for its users, but it’s complicated.
Even Non-Profits Need Revenue
Mozilla’s 2017 audit states that a large share of its revenue comes from search engines, which pay Mozilla a small amount for each search directed to the search engine. Mozilla has had contracts with Google, Bing, and Yahoo at various times to default searches to these engines. Their current contract default search engine is Google. The auditors note that cancellation of these default search contracts is a substantial risk to Mozilla. Google pays Mozilla with money made from targeted advertising. Therefore, if browsing gets too private, Mozilla still stands to lose revenue. Not as directly as Google, but they are still at risk.
Google, as a public corporation, must keep their revenues up to satisfy their stockholders. Mozilla is a non-profit, but their engineers and other employees do not work for free. To continue to thrive, Mozilla must compete with public corporations for these employees with adequate facilities and wages.
Caution
What does this mean for the public? The high-tech network world is subtly connected and intertwined. TANSTAAFL. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Most free services today are either loss-leaders for paid services, or they are bankrolled by selling data on the habits of the service users. Even when it appears that they are not. Until that basic fact changes, your privacy is on the market.
No matter which browser you choose, it is up to you to select privacy options that correspond to the level of privacy you want.