My esteemed colleague MG Siegler just posted about an admittedly quite in-your-face campaign from Microsoft down under, criticizing Redmond for a ‘pathetic’ attempt at trying to make people switch from using whatever browser other than IE they’re using at the moment in exchange for a chance to win $10,000. I don’t necessarily disagree – it’s fair to say there are far better ways to market browsers than covert bribery and making the competition look like bad eggs – but it doesn’t really surprise me and it won’t work anyway.
But do the browser wars us geeks follow so closely matter to John Doe at all?
Here’s a video some NY-based Google employees put up on YouTube a while ago, titled ‘What is a browser?’:
Pretty funny, and as Orli Yakuel said on Twitter, it kind of puts these browser wars (IE8! Safari! Firefox! Chrome! Opera!) in a whole different perspective.
Note the difference in culture, though. While Microsoft is trying to lure people away from using browsers like Firefox or Chrome with cold hard cash (or at least a chance to get some of that), Google employees don’t make a big fuss about letting people use the brand names of competitors in their videos and they humorously handle the fact that none of the people interviewed knew what Google Chrome is to begin with.
And by the way, the guy that said he’s probably not the right one to ask because he’s not into computers that much, is not that far off:
“I don’t know, I guess the Internet is just where you, you know, find anything and I guess you browse the same way.”
I agree there are better ways to lure people to use your browser but if you have got Cash, the competition is also very strong then I guess that is not a bad way atleast for a kickstart.
There have been numerous companies who have done it successfully. Ofcourse in the end the quality of the product counts.
Okie, if Robin says we leave that esteemed ****** in his ignorance.
Only IE8 is making use of tab bar for other purposes, like settings button. Others are wasting pixels. Also we want crash free browser, speed is not the criteria.
So now we know why the Google chrome was so plain..It was just to get people google it out..
I mean, the Google chrome ad…
Yeah, this is a good clip. When you consider the final stat they give, of only 8% of people actually knowing what a browser is, it shows why IE’s market share isn’t more diminished despite being an inferior browser to Firefox and Opera.
There’s also the EU ruling about W7 having to ship with no browser. However, the truth is that they’ll just do deals to have it preinstalled by the PC manufacturers anyway – which makes you wonder who actually gains from all this. But it’s better than shipping with no ‘Internet machine’ at all.
Well it’s only 50 people on the street, but I agree most people probably don’t even know there’s something other than IE.
Most people probably do know its that they do not know where to get it.
Most people have probably heard of firefox and that its like IE but they know nothing else about it.
If computers are more like a tool to connect to the internet which is similar to a utility, then its reasonable for people not to care about the browser brand any more than they know about the Honeywell or General Electric equipment they have in their homes.
IMHO browser wars are more standard wars than anything else. To stretch the utility metaphor, Google, Mozilla, MS, Apple, Opera, etc are fighting for their standards like Tesla and Edison in the past.
lol reminds of the video “Americans are not Stupid ” http://www.yout...h?v=fJuNgBkloFE
The did the same thing in Rotterdam, with similarly bad results. Video is in Dutch, but the results are strikingly similar.
http://www.pete...l/writings/246/
WTF????!!!! 8%????!!!! This video makes me feel like a total complete geek. It also puts down NY, TX ftw
to me this shows Google’s intelligence
this shows lack of american’s intelligence
50% of Americans cannot identify Europe (the world’s largest economy) on a world map.
You could replace browser with almost any noun and get the same response.
“Europe (the world’s largest economy)”
Although technically true it’s kinda a cheap way to get on top.
Let’s combine the economic numbers of the US, Canada and Mexico and call it the NAU. Now that’s BIG
See I can make stuff up too.
Let’s combine the economic numbers of the US, Canada and Mexico and call it the NAU. Now that’s BIG
Well you could call it “North America” as the original poster said “Europe”
Perhaps he meant “EU”
“Europe” isn’t a country/state despite the various claims to the contrary. And claiming that “Europe” is the world’s largest economy is a little disingenuous. As other posters pointed out, that’s like saying “North America”.
Also, if you’re going to claim that 50% of americans can’t find europe, please cite a source.
ignorance != intelligence
lol.. americans are big L-O-L
You’d likely get the same results in any other country.
Not Ireland. Seriously, we’re seen as potato munching old-fashioned people, but we’re quite at the forefront. I reckon IE marketshare is about 55% in home users or less, but much higher in Businesses here about 80% – that’s just my guess, but from what I’ve seen – Hell, even my grandpa figured out how to install Firefox on his own because he hated the colour of the ‘Explorer World “E” ‘
I’d say a large part of this is to do with the large IT presence in Ireland -Google, Facebook, Apple, Ebay and Intel are all spread around the country and we have a largely knowledge-based economy – so people are more in tune with terms like “browser” – and when people understand, they can make choices.
You’re right. I mean here is the US we don’t have much of a technology presence whatsoever. We’re a backward people, reliant upon the technological prowess of other nations. It’s a shame really. I wonder what our nation would be like if we had a robust foundation in science and technology and led the world in innovation, with companies and universities spread throughout the land that invented paradigm-shifting software, systems, and hardware. If only.
oh wait…..
hahaha, this is hilarious!
But I get the point you’re trying to make. If we assume this clip to be a reflection of how people are, what matters is what is installed on their system. If IE comes pre-loaded, they use it. If someone comes and installs and defaults to another browser, people use it.
But what happens when there is NO BROWSER on the system? This case WILL NOT happen in the following case -
# Branded computers – HP, Dell, etc will never give their users a system without a browser. Instead, in Europe especially, OEMs will have an opportunity to EARN MORE from browser companies like Microsoft, Google, Firefox to “pre-load” their browser..
The point is the people who are not savvy enough to know what browser they use, are not savvy enough to go buy an assembled computer.. they would buy a branded computer and get a pre-installed browser..
But what the attempt by MS does is at least tell people that there’s something like a “browser” on your system.. they’re using “charity” as the means to tell them, but it might just help awareness about a “browser”
Microsoft has finally understood, they can’t with stand with other emerging browser, so they have started bribing the users, it’s quite common in Microsoft’s history!
It’s a sad thing that this is the case even with places where the internet is something that we rely on. I guess it’s testimony to the fact that we, as people who spend a lot of time discussing and exploring new ‘technology’ are in the minority, most people just “use” whatever they’re given and don’t ever attempt to learn about it, how it works or the purpose of it.
That video was painful to watch though
Why should they care about how it works? You don’t need to be an automotive engineer to drive a car, or an electric engineer to flip a light switch.
People just want stuff to work in the easiest way possible. Each of these people interviewed is an expert in SOMETHING- their day job. Computers are just not their vocation or hobby, so why should they care?
Object leson to tech companies: your typical customer is NOT like you. And he doesn’t want to be.
great post Amusis
I’m sorry, Amusis, that’s just not a valid excuse to me. If you turn off your brain at graduation, and stop being curious about things once school’s over… not only are you wasting your own life, but how do you expect to give your kids anything worthwhile?
If I use something, whether it be a car, computer, air transport, cell phone… I will research it, both to satisfy my own curiosity, and to at least have a basic idea of what to do when it breaks. And it really makes me sad to see that not only is my attitude quite far outside the norm, but that laziness and apathy have become the standard.
I do agree with Amusis somewhat, but in a broader sense you are completely right. Most people are more or less dependant on computers today (at least here in Sweden), but still have no interest in finding out what they are actually using.
Just the other day, a co-worker of mine bought a new cellphone with a 12mpx camera. She bought it mainly for the camera but still have no idea what a megapixel is.
I am getting more and more annoyed by the fact that people take absolutely no interest in details in their lives. As long as they have food and somewhere to live, they have no problem being force fed by commercials, propagandha, public opinion and all of the rest. They just take on any idea that sounds good enough and act out of pure ignorance…
i’d say it’s a somewhat wrong analogy you’re using here. instead i’d have put it as follows: If i had to drive a car, i would feel much more comfortable if i had my driving license first
I want $10 grand, why get upset at MS for giving money away LOL?????? Like I said before im on IE7 and will do the upgrade to IE8
Ha! That is the definition of making a brand.
- What is a browser?
- Google.
Yeah, great point.
This is a really important issue in the browser wars. I noticed this same thing with all of my clients. How do you explain a browser to normal people? As you saw in the video where the one guy says, “I use Firefox. My friend came over and installed it and said this is what you’re using now” that’s about the best way I’ve found but there’s got to be a way to make people understand.
We should do a definition by referendum. This is an emerging market, and terms are still developing. Thus, if most people say a browser is a search engine, then let nature take its course and allow the word browser to take on the meaning.
The real reason people don’t know what a browser is is probably because they don’t need to know what a browser is. For what most people do with the internet, the nuances between firefox and IE just don’t matter. Think about it, how much of a difference does reading a news article on CCN.com whether you’re using one browser or another.
Wow. Try do make the same enquiry in Italy and you’ll be agape. If in NYC there’s only 8% aware of what a browser is, i guess here in italy there would be 10 times less.
I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve installed Firefox on someone’s computer and set it as the default and told them to use it from then on.
Watching this makes me feel like a total dork…
ppl dont care much as long as they can get to what they want on the net
It just shows how much people have been brainwashed into thinking that computers are far too difficult and they shouldn’t even try to understand the most basic things. One of the pillars of Microsoft’s strategy is to keep people in ignorance.
Brainwashed? By whom? You think perhaps for most people, computers are just boring, and uninteresting?
How much do you know about aeronautic engineering? yet you fly on planes? Who brainwashed you into not trying to understand how planes work?
True, but I have many times thought about how things like planes work, how things connect to eachother. I call it natural curiosity, it comes with life.
No one has been brainwashed to not try to understand how planes work, but almost everyone went to school and got their natural curiosity distorted or erased…
we’re not asking them to have professional computer engineering skills, neither to understand how a computer’s internal circuits work as far as i know right?
hell, it’s just a matter of knowing a minimum of info about your tool. so would you go driving a car without your license and knowing a minimum about the said vehicle? ha!
Interesting video. I wonder if the interviewer(s) began by saying to people, ‘Hello, we’re from Google and we’re making a video…’? If so, the mention of the company could conceivably have influenced the way in which people answered the question posed. (So, because the nice man said he was from Google, then asked me what a browser is, evidently Google is a browser. Otherwise why would he say he was from Google and then ask me that question?)
Yes, the first comment out of there mouth was “we are from Google and making a video… may we ask you some questions.” They definitely catch you off guard. You find yourself second guessing your own answers because they are from Google. What you see in the video are people’s first reaction to the questions… which is what makes it funny and proves the point they are trying to make. What they do not show is the intelligent responses once you are able to pull yourself together. It was fun and I am glad it gave everyone here a good laugh… I laughed a few times myself.
Yep – I often explain to people what a “browser” is (you know how you type a web address into the bar on your screen?) and I totally understand because I was that soldier. I knew what IE was. I even knew what Firefox was. I just didn’t know they were called “browsers” so if someone said “what browser do you use?” I’d go “huh?”
sooo.. i think it’s pretty safe to say that everyone who buys a PC uses IE and everyone who buys a mac uses safari..
at least, 92% of them.
select the Browers that you want when you buy a pc …..But i select Firefox not Microsoft IE8 ..hahah
Holy cow, I didn’t know Ruben Studdard was still around!
New Yorkers are dumb according to the pole they did what they didnit show was Newjerseyers they say your guys are dumb because about 80 % of us the Newjerseyers they know what a browser is because they hap to use it to commute to work even they work in Newark they hap to use many different browsers to take the train and the train not expensive you must understand for what mater can you ask it not who you know it who you know it not who you know it what you know how to use.
So according to the POLL you have to use it to commute to work? Amazing, how did the USA invent a tehconlogy to tranpsort people to work via a brswer. I wnat one of thsoe – now the problem is will I fit in that pipe or do I hap um Hvae to lsoe wiehgt to fit in it? And how do I get out the oehtr side? Firefox?
LOL !!! Let me guess, Hilary is a New Yorker? LOL, I love the emulated typos.
Hilarious video, and sobering.
What I hear there over and over is that browser = search engine. So if you own the browser market, you only need to make the default search engine BING… and you pick up huge market share.
What yall dinent know that a browser is a search engine and you call yourselves techies? I knew this when they first invented the internet back in 2003.
Very sobering. No wonder there are thousands of people out there who still use IE6 and wonder why the internet is so rubbish….
hilarious!
the background stock music sounds like it’s from a second-rate educational teen flick from the eighties.
This is SCARY … even the geek looking guy in the end seems effin lost. I mean … I’m a opera user, is it even safe for me to remain in the mainstream society ? just questionning my life there
A favorite interview question is: “What happens when you type Google.com into your browser and click Enter?” http://radar.or...-big-ideas.html
We take so much for granted
I like the enormous “I’m A PC” flashing billboard in the background. heh
TECHIES DON’T UNDERSTAND CUSTOMERS
I hope this video shows IT folks how poorly they (i.e., IT folks) understand non-IT people. Most people do not need to know what a browser is. As long as they get what they want, it does not matter whether what they use is called a “browser” or “Chrome” or “IE” or “search engine” ….. it’s IT folks, who often appear smug and arrogant, who do NOT get it.
Agree completely. It’s like being obsessed about your own religion and not being able to understand why other people just don’t care.
Q: what is a browser?
A: that’s a dumb question@! why don’t you just google it.. IM LATE ALREADY GET OUT OF MY WAY PAL!!!
Good video, Too Funny and people are so ignorant. Everyone knows the proper definition for a browser is someone who walks through a store or just browses- DUH.
(BTW- I’m being facetious)
Anyone catch Digsby at the beginning?
else* catch the ad for it at the beginning I mean.
(Can I not edit my comment?)
Digsby ad: http://twitpic.com/7m68b
And there’s also a big sign somewhere of “I’M A PC”
Wow, you’re hot Orli. But then again, it could just be my browser…. or search engine.
I tried to browser you, I mean search engine you but I couldn’t find additional pics.
This is an excellent insight of ignorance!
It seems to me that most people who use Internet Explorer don’t even know that they use Internet Explorer. They say things like, “Oh yeah, I click the picture of an E to get online.”
Almost anyone who knows the difference between browsers will realize that IE is the worst, and most people will agree Firefox is the best (some will say that Chrome or Safari are faster, more reliable, and render sites better, but I like Firefox overall for the plugins and usability).
But anyway, the browser wars are good. It sparks competition that makes every browser better, and if enough is said about it, people will hear about alternatives and start thinking that they don’t have to stick with IE, that there might be something better.
This is nothing. As a programmer and general nerd, i hate watching nerds poke fun at lay people not knowing what technical things mean.
Do u have to know how a car engine works to drive it? Do you need to graduate medical school to visit the doctor’s office? Do u need to know how to write a language compiler before you can write a program?
Furthermore it is not unreasonable for people not to know the individual steps. Companies like AOL and MS have spent the last 15yrs and tons of money to mislead people about the internet and how the end user actually interacts with it.
People love to pick something they already know as the criteria for intelligence.
If I asked the Google staff how to run a farm they would be the idiots. I constantly work with different web application developers who don’t understand how DNS works yet DNS settings are paramount to people accessing a site.
It’s because all the people that know what browsers are are most likely inside working online using a browser and not out and about on the streets.
I use Chrome by default but all others for compatibility testing, ya heard?
A friend of mine is actually in this video. The video was shot around October 2008, so not surprised that none of the participants had heard of Chrome.
Is that Mandy Patinkin at 0:48 ?
Perhaps the saddest thing is that my biggest takeaway is that NYC luddite chicks are insanely hot. I obviously need to leave Silicon Valley.
or get out of the technology business
I agree that a lot of this is explainable by how the question was asked–by people’s ignorance of more the “term” itself: browser …rather than of the reality that that, well, “something” exists, which they do and must use, to go onto the internet.
Asked the other way, “what is it that browsers like Internet Explorer or alternatives like Firefox and others bring about if and when they are used in the course of using computer?
Of course, Microsoft hasn’t exactly helped by naming others of its facilities, Windows Explorer and MSN Explorer.
And, with the url bar somewhat doubling as a search bar these days, it seems easy enough to see, and maybe forgive, people confusing browsing with searching.
I have a “young” (compared to me anyway) couple I’ve been tutoring a bit lately in computers and the internet, are themselves technicians of a sort (electricians, well husband anyway, wife just helps) and the guy in fact claims to have been in , 25 years ago, the very first high school computer class/program in the United States (Templeton, Massachusetts). But either one of them so far is proving impossible to get to do their “searching” from the search bar or a search engine page and bar: they utterly insist upon putting their search terms into the URL bar…and of course complain that “it doesn’t always work too well.”
But their probable point of view: a few months ago we had never gone online by ourselves…we’ve still got things like left click vs right click (and an awful lot more) assaulting our brains and right now troubling with just about anything beyond what even just more or less works for us, is overload, plain and simple.
yet another perpetuation of ignorance…
just like the one happened with health literacy…
check out more about health literacy on my post…
I respectfully disagree with comments and responses that dismiss public ignorance about what a Web browser is and people being unable to identify the Web browser that they use (assuming respondents use one browser only).
The hypertext transfer protocol (http://) was a revolutionary improvement over the gopher protocol (gopher://) for several reasons, but the ability to link relevant and related documents, plus the ease of navigating a Web site compared to a Gopher site, made access intuitive and fast.
The Web would have been impossible without internationally recognized standards. HTML and XHTML are markup languages based upon SGML, Standard Generalized Markup Language (ISO 8879).
Initially, the 22 tags defined by Tim Berners-Lee were “HTML,” but the initial release of the NCSA Mosaic browser added a tage to support inline images (which it could display directly, which differed from image support in Lynx, a text-based browser that supported downloading images only — and Lynx is still in use and is an excellent tool for testing site accessibility…and images lacking the ALT tag that describes the image appear as ‘[image]‘, which the only information visually impaired users get about images). Surprisingly, Lynx supported tables for organizing information, but Mosaic did not.
The developers of Mosaic went on to write Netscape’s browser, which became extremely popular. Microsoft “woke up” and realized, “Oops! We do not offer a Web browser!” After Microsoft was denied a Netscape license, it purchased the Spyglass Web browser and rebranded it as Internet Explorer.
Competing interests and the constant flow of new proprietary tags, which were one feature of the “browser wars,” led to serious discussions about standards; the IETF had released an Internet draft for “HTML,” Dave Raggett had a competing Internet draft, “HTML+,” and Netscape and Microsoft added proprietary tags with every minor release.
I’ve been hand-coding Web sites since 1992 and I had to resort to writting and adding “browser sniffing” JavaScript code in HTML documents in an effort to make content accessible to each major browser.
Although there was no HTML 1.0 IETF standard, the IETF publish the drafter for HTML 2.0 in November 2004.
Since 1996, the HTML specifications have been maintained, with input from commercial software vendors, by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which provides on-line and downladable (open-souce code) tools to allow Web designers and developers to validate their HTML, XHTML, and CSS code.
Internet Explorer has the poorest record of supporting the W3C’s standards. Firefox got Microsoft’s attention, and Microsoft has made improvements with MSIE 7 and 8, although Microsoft will always support “MS-HTML” and there are Web sites “work” with Internet Explorer only.
The whole point of Web standards is to allow Web sites and browsers to be compatible, regardless of the browser or computing platform.
Security is also an issue, and Internet Explorer’s use of ActiveX controls makes it inherently dangerous.
Users who do not know what a Web browser is obviously cannot take advantage of the options they have (aside from IE, which Microsoft rams down the throats of Windows users in the US, but cannot do in EU countries — nor can Microsoft install Windows Media Player on copies of Windows sold in Europe. (Many town and city governments have dropped Microsoft altogether and are using Linux and free, open-source software — a trend that started in Germany and has proven to be very successful.)
Sadly, there are Windows users who use Internet Explorer, “because it’s there,” and beginning Mac users typically use Apple’s Safari browser, although Firefox is very popular with Mac users.
People do not know what a Web browser is, think that the Web is the Internet (and they though AOL was the Internet before its demise), and Google has achieved “Microsoft-like” status. In popular culture, if people refer to performing a Web search, they often use “google” as a verb.
American ignorance is more than embarrassing. Someone mentioned in a comment that 50% of Americans cannot find Europe on a globe or world map.
Has anyone quoted the recent survey of American high school students? It revealed that 25% of high school juniors and seniors could not find the United States on a world map or globe.
Cordially,
David
One word: MORONS
“What is a browser?”
A miserable pile of code!