Fox In Google's Henhouse

2009年 03月 09日 15:03

Fox In Google's Henhouse

It's no secret that Mozilla's Firefox Web browser is emerging as a potent competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. What may not be fully appreciated is the impact that Firefox could have on Web browsing habits -- and the number of searches people perform.

The most recent version of Firefox, released last June, makes it much easier for Web surfers to return to a site they've previously visited. They won't need to know the site's address -- the browser's address bar offers what's essentially an automated bookmarks list.

This is likely to reduce the number of search queries per person over time. People frequently use search engines as a de facto address bar to find a site they visit repeatedly but haven't bookmarked.

The feature is likely to become standard. Microsoft is adding something similar in its upcoming version of Internet Explorer. IE had 67.4% of the browser market in February, according to Net Applications. Firefox's market share was nearly 22%, up from 19% last June.

Google isn't sitting still. Three months after the new Firefox version was released, Google came out with its Chrome browser, which also has a similar feature. Chrome's share of the browser market was 1.15% last month.

Search will remain a vibrant market. Firefox's new feature won't help someone searching for the first time. And the importance to ad-revenues of people getting to sites they already know is unclear.

That said, the likely change in search habits could reduce search's growth. For Google, the dominant player, that can't be good.

Martin Peers

M

ozilla的網絡瀏覽器Firefox正在成為微軟公司(Microsoft)網絡瀏覽器Internet Explorer的強大競爭對手﹐這已不是什麼秘密。人們可能沒有充分認識到的是﹐Firefox對用戶的互聯網瀏覽習慣與網上搜索次數將會產生的影響。

去年6月發佈的最新版Firefox讓網民返回以前曾訪問過的網站變得方便了許多。他們無需記住這些網站的網址﹐Firefox的網址欄基本提供了自動的書簽列表。

這可能會減少每人的網絡搜索量。人們經常拿搜索引擎當成事實上的地址欄來用﹐好找到自己多次訪問但沒有記錄下來的網站。

這 個功能可能會成為基準。微軟也在即將推出的Internet Explorer新版中添加了類似功能。據互聯網研究企業Net Applications的數據﹐2月份IE在瀏覽器市場的佔有率為67.4%。Firefox的市場佔有率接近22%﹐較去年6月的19%有所上升。

谷歌(Google)也沒閑著。新的Firefox瀏覽器發佈三個月後﹐谷歌也推出了自己的Chrome瀏覽器﹐功能也與Firefox類似。Chrome上個月在瀏覽器市場的佔有率為1.15%。

搜索市場仍將充滿活力。Firefox的新功能對首次進行搜索的用戶不起作用。人們訪問已知網站對廣告收入有何影響還不清楚。

雖然如此﹐搜索習慣可能發生的變化或許會降低搜索的增長速度。對於搜索引擎的龍頭老大谷歌來說﹐這一點可不是好事。

Martin Peers