Browser War Result: Apple too Cool for War, Microsoft Wins
Posted on 02 March 2007
The Browser War event at Yahoo two nights ago was pretty neat. Not as much socializing / networking time as I had expected, but plenty of geek talk still.
Isn’t that a sweet image?? Some interesting things about the event:
- Yahoo is obssessed with themselves. Seriously, it’s like they brainwash their employees. Everywhere you turn, you see purple and yellow. Oh and the word ‘Yahoo’. Even the huge garbage dump outside is decked out in purple with a huge ‘Yahoo’ logo slapped across the front. I kid you not!
Wow.
- Microsoft showed Firefox up… I thought it’d be the other way around. So Chris Wilson (IE architect) and a guy from Firefox were there. They were on a panel answering quetsions from the audience. The Firefox rep was a young guy who talked way too much and tried to crack 50%-of-the-time unfunny jokes way too often. Chris, on the other hand, was cool and down to Earth.
I thought Firefox was supposed to be cool? Microsoft wins in my book.
- Apple was too cool to show up. IE, Firefox, Opera, and… Safari? Nope, no Safari. According to the host, the event coordinators contacted Apple repeatedly to join the Browser War event, but they declined and said they were too busy. I don’t know what to think of this. Silly Apple ;)
Your thoughts?
- We witnessed a prototype of the $100 laptop of the future. Unfortunately I didn’t have a camera on me. But imagine an older ibook (see below) but a lot smaller. That’s what it looked like. Minimal hard drive. Hakon from Opera brought it. It’s used primarily for surfing the web. Like a bigger PDA. I wrote a post before about the future $100 laptop (termed ‘Google Cubes’).
Oh and parking at Yahoo is really bad.
Best part of the night:
When Hakon from Opera (he built Opera) walked in late and started blatantly criticizing Chris for how bad Microsoft IE7 is. How did Chris respond? By taking meticulous notes on Opera’s latest and coolest features during Hakon’s presentation. (See above image :)
Gotta love the guy.
Tags: Browser War, Yahoo, Microsoft, Firefox, Opera
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March 2nd, 2007 at 9:05 am
yo tony, your summary of the browser war talks was oddly captivating and it surprised me that the mozilla and opera reps seemed overly critical and overeager. Though i was a dedicated IE6 user, I switched to firefox when IE7 came out. IE7 just feels slow for some reason. anyway…interesting post.
March 2nd, 2007 at 9:54 am
Where is Yahoo? My thought on Apple is they are elitist. Plan and simple
March 2nd, 2007 at 10:10 am
[…] geekwhat […]
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:15 am
Thanks alvin, appreciate it. Those are just my personal opinions, others may have a different take. Hakon from Opera was actually very engaging and humorous. He flew here all the way from Norway for this event, that’s pretty awesome. The Firefox guy was very intelligent, just overly verbose.
Check out Mike Lee’s page (3rd comment) for a more detailed recap of the event.
Eric - Apple is elitist. I’m typing this on a powerbook so I won’t harp on them too much ;)
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:46 am
Man, as a Mozilla rep at UPenn, I’m rather disappointed that Firefox sent a babbler. They really have no need to be overly verbose, since they clearly have the better product.
[A note to IE7 users: In order to use the final release of IE7, you WILL have to pay for it since it is bundled with Vista and will only run full-featured in the Vista architecture. The version of IE7 I use now on XP is buggy and just, meh.]
Since you were at the event and we weren’t, why don’t you briefly mention the technical advantages/disadvantages we will be expecting in the coming months? What about IE7 makes it the winner in “your book?” :) I’d love to hear about the new features in the coming iterations of these browsers.
Sadly, I don’t even see Opera in the picture. At least they have that deal with the Nintendo Wii :P
JT
March 2nd, 2007 at 1:47 pm
http://youtube.com/watch?v=VG9Xjn_w8_Q
=)
March 2nd, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Nice Nii, check out that link to see the $100 laptop in action.
Jon, so the guy who was representing Firefox was Mike Shaver (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Shaver). Chris from IE didn’t talk about Vista too much, in fact he made it a point not to plug Vista. He admitted to how IE7 is buggy and such.
Although… I was at a talk earlier today at school given by the platform architect of the Xbox. He was running Vista on his computer and it was projected onto the screen. Pretty fancy stuff, eye candy galore. I was drooling a bit. ;)
I noticed that when Hakon mentioned that Opera is on the Wii, a lot of us audience members suddenly became more engaged.
March 2nd, 2007 at 4:28 pm
A guy like Chris is priceless. Look at the way he changes brand perspective by merit of the way he relates to other reps. Amazing.
March 2nd, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Omg, Mike Shaver was one of the founders of Mozilla!!! He MUST’VE been geeky :) I liiiike. Thanks for the link, Tony.
Admittedly, Vista does look very nice. It just sucks that you have to pay to use it and its browser.
March 7th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Thanks for the mention, Tony! And sadly, yes, yellow and purple is EVERYWHERE at Yahoo. Even the flowers are yellow and purple. Crazy, huh?
March 7th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Glad you agree Mike! As much as Yahoo resembles Barney, you gotta love the company.
Flickr, MyBlogLog, peanut butter manifesto… who can compete? ;) I’m a proud shareholder!