Browser Battles

There’s a World Wide War going on right now, and unless you’re reading this article over my shoulder through binoculars you’re part of it.  Browsers are the biggest use of electricity since Zeus’s temper, and companies will stop at nothing to corner the market. Current standings show that last year Firefox grabbed 46.94% of the market while IE took a well respected 40.52%, respectively wiping the floor with the rest of the competition. But for all the improvements, addition of tabs, and admission of what audience’s actually do online (by programming a “private browsing” mode), there have been some hilarious mis-steps along the way:

1.  State Department Finds Free Too Expensive

Without taking sides we can say that Internet Explorer’s 60% share of all desktops is based on laziness: huge organizations have to pick one, and it takes nothing less than an asteroid impact carrying particularly contagious computer viruses to make them change their mind.  At the US State Department’s Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review last year everyone present was treated to an example of said departments understanding of the modern web.

Secretary of State Clinton (the Hillary one) and Undersecretary Kennedy were faced with the question (as well as having apparently having a “Most Presidential Name” competition). “Why can’t State Department employees use Firefox?”  While we’re entirely in favour of government employees not running random programs, Firefox had been approved for all American government departments and was already in use by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (and it’s hard to sound smarter than that without just making up words).  Kennedy replied that it was a question of expense - and if you can’t see the problem here, we hope IE is working out for you.

(Note: said “expense” likely involves an estimate of retraining computer administration staff, but if you actually have to teach your admins about Firefox you’d be better off replacing them.)

2.  Microsoft Calls The Kettle Black 

Microsoft erected a stone-throwing catapult inside a glass castle by blasting Safari’s security flaws in a 2008 announcement.  It was revealed that anyone running Safari on a windows machine was vulnerable to a “carpet-bombing” attack, which sounds totally safe and friendly, though anyone so confused as to be running Safari on a PC probably has far worse problems like remembering left from right as they stare at their shoes every morning.

The issue has since been resolved, so you can rest easier if you’re the one in twenty users who still Safari’s their way around the web (aka “Someone who bought a mac and still doesn’t know there are other browsers”) or the one in a million running it on a PC, in which case we’d like to ask you to use your incredible powers of improbability to pick our lottery numbers.

3.  German Government versus Internet Explorer

Many people fight against the apparently unstoppable Internet Explorer because they’re fan boys, open source geeks, or otherwise understand everything about computers.  But the stakes were raised recently when the German government advised citizens to stop using IE and switch to any other browser they could lay their hands on or, if necessary, resort to smoke signals until something safer could be found.  This was because of the immense security flaw which apparently allowed China to hack into pretty much everyone’s browser, and you might notice that this “security issue” now involves at least one major protagonist from 100% of all past World Wars.  This may mean that IE might, maybe, have a tiny bit of a problem.