Time For Microsoft To Embrace Firefox

In August of 2006, I wrote a post suggesting that Microsoft get out of the browser business. Actually, I should have said browser charity, since Internet Explorer is a cost sink without revenue. So I ask again: what would be the bad thing that would happen for the Softies if the successor to IE 8 were Firefox?

Here is part of that post, which seems as relevant today as it was over two years ago:

I think it may have happened this way: At some Microsoft meeting...someone said something like, "I know this is a bit whacky, but why do we really care if people use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer?" After a long silence, someone else said, "You know, that is a very good question. We used to care a lot, but I’m not sure there is any longer a reason to care."

When Microsoft declared war on Netscape a decade ago, Windows had no Internet capability. The threat was that the Netscape browser might somehow evolve in such a way as to take over the user interface and make Windows irrelevant. Microsoft did not much understand the Internet or the web and its brain trust used an extreme version of the "attack their strength" strategy, attack and kill ("embrace and extend" in polite company). The rest is history.

That was then. Today, Windows has Internet and web functionality deep in its guts. Desktop applications can and do use these capabilities regardless of which browser a user may choose to use. In fact, Internet Explorer is now really just an application that uses Windows internet services, Improving Internet Explorer is costly. Its security problems have given Microsoft a black eye that never seems to heal. It does not bring in a dime of revenue. It causes antitrust problems. And Microsoft now fully understands what a web browser is and is not, and that a browser is no longer a strategic threat to Windows.

...How exactly would that threaten the Windows franchise? Perhaps it would not. Perhaps it would expand the market for the platforms which run Windows. Perhaps it is time to end the browser war so the Microsoft brain trust can focus resources on more important strategic issues?

Steve Ballmer, are you listening? Just declare the browser wars to be over, and offer Firefox as the Windows default browser. Then how about focusing on products that produce healthy revenue and profit streams instead of just cost?