As a developer of software solutions and a quasi writer, I can often be a hypocrite, because I like the fact there is a monopoly in not only the Operating System Environment (Windows) but also the Internet Browser (Internet Explorer and Firefox) market. So why am I a hypocrite – because it means less time developing, which = cost savings….
I could not imagine having to develop solutions for 15 different operating systems and 15 different browsers, because we would be spending 10% of the time developing solutions and 90% of the time testing them on all the different platforms and browsers and you the agencies/consumers would be paying about 10 times as much.
As all of my solutions are web based, I only need to worry about the browser market and there are only two players Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox browsers, the latter (Firefox) is Open Source and by far the best browser on the market today. Internet Explorer will make up some ground with the new Internet Explorer Browser (which is very good) due for release any time now.
However Firefox is also releasing version 2.0 very shortly and this will extend its lead (in terms of being the best browser)
There are other browsers on the market including Opera and also The Apple Safari Browser (build on the Mozilla Engine)
This is a monopoly space where having fewer choices is better than having too many choices, for everyone!
Also because either choice is 100% FREE…………….