How To Lose A Market In One Easy Lesson: Happy Birthday IE 6

How To Lose A Market In One Easy Lesson: Happy Birthday IE 6

The Amazing Browser That Opened Up The World But Never Grew Up

Disclaimer: Please excuse me for a little bit of nostalgia. I appreciate that some of you who will read this article will not have even have been a twinkle in your parent’s eyes when Internet Explorer 6.0 was released to the world, but I tell you, there was a whole different world in a time before Google Chrome.

My magic trick

Okay. I will perform a magical trick. I can see you surfing the Internet. You are just a teenager. And it seems like you are using a browser to access the Internet. To me, it looks like you are using either Netscape or Internet Explorer. Is that the case?

Yes, you say, and the audience gasps!

It has to be Chrome

For most of us now, we will typically be using Google Chrome or Safari. I personally have them all, as I need to test code, but still, mostly prefer Firefox. Well, I say I have them all, but there’s one I don’t have on my Macbook … Microsoft Edge. Why? Because it is terrible and has advanced little over the years. And, so, while Google pushed forward https and their search engine, Microsoft fossiled their browser and continually pushed Yahoo at us. While we wanted simplicity in searching the Internet, Microsoft pushed a daily feed of uninteresting guff. If we wanted the news, we would get it somewhere else. Microsoft wanted to constrain us, but we just wanted a search engine.

The mighty crash

And, so, which major Internet product went from an 80% market share to virtually zero? That would be Internet Explorer (IE). IE 6 was released on this day in 2001, and by 2004, it had more than 80% of the browser market. Since then, it has crashed (sorry for the bad pun!). It was integrated into the amazing new operating system (Windows XP), and brought forward a major advancement in useability and computing performance. For the first time, users had a real operating system and an integrated way of communicating with the Web.

Most of us will remember using IE 6, and with its cumbersome way of setting up security in zones (especially if you installed it on a Microsoft server). For Microsoft, it was a Windows product, but along came the mobile phone. And, for those with Apple devices, the Safari browser just integrated so much better than IE, and barely anyone used IE on a Mac.

And, many will still remember setting up their modem settings for CompuServe or AOL in order to connect their computer to the Internet:

In fact, the first application that many people would install on their computer was either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. For performance, security, usability, and so many other things … these browsers (especially Chrome) wiped the floor with IE. In fact, IE hit rock bottom. This is strange, as it was installed as a default browser on more than 80% of the computers. The advantage of selling the operating system should have been a winner for IE, but the product hardly advanced past IE 6, and few people will remember IE 7, IE 10, and so on.

Conclusions

The crash of IE 6 is a lesson for most companies. Focus on the user and their security, and just because you are the market leader and have all the advantages under the sun, doesn’t mean that you will always be. Innovate, change, and understand what your users want.