Platform Openness as a Strategic Parameter. Google Chrome vs. Apple Safari (PDF)

Scientific Essay from the year 2021 in the subject Business economics - General, grade: 1,3, Hamburg School of Business Administration gGmbH, language: English, abstract: The following report is dedicated to platform openness as a strategic parameter using the example of Google Chrome and Apple Safari.

Even in the early days of the Internet and the use of browsers to access the Internet, there was a competition in the market. This competition between the browsers of Netscape (Netscape Navigator) and Microsoft (Internet Explorer) became known under the synonym " first browser war ". In December 1994, the market share of Netscape Navigator 1.0 was about 80%, while the share of Internet Explorer was 3%.

In November 1997, Microsoft's share was already 39%, while Netscaper's share dropped to 53%. Microsoft emerged from the war as the clear winner. For Shapiro and Varian (1999), the victory was due on the one hand to the financial advantage that Microsoft had over Netscape, and on the other hand to the Microsoft operating system, through which Internet Explorer reached many potential customers. As a result of the browser war, Netscape made the source code for all its products publicly available in 1998. This was not only the birth of today's browser "Firefox", but also the birth of today's well-known open source projects in the browser market.

The first browser war shows that in the early days of browsers, factors such as "open source" or "extensions" and the associated platform openness played only a minor role in the market environment.