by alec on March 14, 2011
Later this week, Browsium Inc will officially launch UniBrows. I feel tempted to make a joke about cosmetic eyebrow products, but I’ll refrain. In fact, UniBrows is the IT department’s answer to Microsoft’s refusal to support the millions of enterprise line of business applications that were built for IE6, and won’t run on IE8. This is likely the biggest blocking issue for any IT department facing an upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7. Microsoft’s stance is to ask their customers to “remediate” their applications to IE8. Remediate is a big word that means rewrite. Frankly, it’s surprising that Microsoft has chosen to abandon its customers in this fashion.
Nevertheless, Browsium solves this problem effectively and cleanly for the IT manager. It gives the IT manager the ability to define profiles specifying settings and configurations including browser engines, java versions and so on for individual sites in the organization. When the site is loaded into IE 8, the correct browser engine (IE 6, for example) is loaded transparently to the end user.
The IT manager simply creates a profile:
Specifies the rules for the profile:
and pushes it to user.
When a user hits a site that requires the profile, that profile is loaded. It even allows individual browser tabs to load their own profiles separately from other browser engines.
UniBrows is as close to seamless as anything I’ve ever seen. It solves a huge problem for Microsoft and their customers. Priced at what can only be described as a “no-brainer” for the corporation, I predict millions of seats will be sold.
This morning I’m glad I don’t live in the EU. Apparently caught between their desire to ship Windows 7 by October of this year, and the EU’s intractable stance on including the browser in the operating system, Microsoft has decided to ship European specific Windows 7 SKU’s with no browser whatsoever. Computer manufacturers will be free to pre-install whatever browser they wish on the PC. Consumers will be free to do the same. In fact, they will have to, since Windows 7 won’t come with any browser. Microsoft plans to make IE available via CDs in stores, as well as through FTP file transfers.
Ugh. Imagine being the family tech support guy or gal when the new version of Windows arrives with NO browser. Get your thumb drives out boys and girls. Better make sure you’ve got a browser available before you start the upgrade.
EU officials had been demanding that the OS ship with competitors products installed, allowing users to make a choice. This would have been great for small browser companies like Opera. Opera CTO Hakon Wium Lie has been the most vocal figure at the EU, sensing a chance to gain free distribution at Microsoft’s expense. What a fabulous opportunity – work a few eurocrats into a lather over the unfairness of Microsoft’s OS monopoly (again) and garner instant access to millions and millions of consumers. Microsoft’s choice, however, is not good for Opera at all. Although it theoretically could result in a bidding war for the position of default browser on desktop PCs, the only vendor that might pay to be on the desktop is Google. Firefox is Open Source, Microsoft will likely not touch paying for distribution lest they be accused of further anti-competitive acts, Opera doesn’t have the money to bid, and Apple probably doesn’t really care.
The irony? IE share is already cratering worldwide no thanks to the EU.
