Demise of the Browser
As a follow up to my recent two posts, “Real-Time Web” and “Peak of the Domain Market“, I want to discuss how the standard web browser has competition longer term. I do not think the browser is dead or will ever die, but I do think the use of the Internet is moving toward different types of applications. With that thought process, I think it limits the supposed infinite value of domains longer term.
The first example of the demise of the browser is on mobile phones. I barely use my mobile browser any more, unless necessary, and I have a Blackberry, which has far fewer apps than an iPhone. I don’t imagine iPhone users directly use a browser at all. I say directly, because many of the apps will still send you to a browser for more information. Web sites are not made for these phones and the thousands of new apps are infinitely better than a browser-based website version of the same information.
Moving from the phone to a computer, the best example is Twitter, which is popular on both tools. Twitter is increasingly used less in the desktop web browser and more in third-party applications such as Tweetdeck, Twhirl, Seesmic Desktop, and more. These AIR programs have incredible potential in my opinion. Outside of these applications, Skype, Bloomberg, and RSS readers are other tools people are using for Internet information navigation, all of which are innovating for the real-time web, not the dynamic or static one. I continue to believe that Facebook will eventually create their own desktop app themselves as well.
While on the subject of Twitter, the 140 character limit itself will take a solid 20% out of all domain prices going forward in my opinion. URL shorteners, such as Bit.ly, have become the method of choice for sending people around the web. In Twitter, we no longer navigate the Internet based on the trust of what domain we are being directed toward. Instead, we navigate based on who is sending the link and their five-word description of the web page. I’ll be honest, at first it is an uncomfortable feeling to click on a completely uninformative redirector link, but I am slowly beginning to trust certain people as sources more than others. This whole process is making web navigation change from Domain -> Content to now being Person -> Content.
The Internet is bigger than a browser. While web pages are a great platform for static or slowly updating information communication, HTML is not the ideal backbone for instant information, which is I believe where we are heading.
Again, I do not think the browser will ever die. Nor will domains. They will always have value and be a core backbone of the Internet, especially for brands (companies still have a lot of work to do for building their brands on domains), Wikipedia-type content information, and journalism. The point is that their monopoly on the Internet is not going to last.
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This just released report refutes everything you just said about the mobile browser:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/09/when-it-comes-to-getting-local-content-on-your-phone-the-mobile-browser-is-still-king/
“Despite the avalanche of mobile apps that let people access local information, the mobile browser is still the king when it comes to finding out what’s going on in your city or neighborhood.”
Did you see the % change in growth in that article? +34% for the browser, +83% for the apps. I’m not talking about today…I’m talking about tomorrow.
Twitter is hardly revolutionary. In the pre-browser era, till today, people used Internet Relay Chat (IRC) which still retains a large amount of non-web traffic and it’s real time. The reason the browser became popular wasn’t any fancy-smancy “social network” like twitter, but the implementation of the web’s protocols in an easy to use application. If you’d rather use twitter deck for twitter, that’s a different interface, the traffic still goes over http. IRC and applications like Skype or previously CU-See-Me use different ports than web browsers do, while still retaining a graphical interface. URL shorteners emerged due to the popularity of twitter’s twisted 140-char limit. Rejaw.com which offered unlimited posting was similar, albeit superior technically unfortunately shut down; yet, it received little recognition by the media, unlike twitter that was somehow adopted by CNN’s hype-inducing “techies”. Back to web browsers, they control 100% of all search engine traffic so they won’t go away as the primary medium of “getting on the Net”.
Good points all, but you have to realize that you are way ahead of the curve of the general population. Five years from now, it will be interesting to see which of these applications survive to become standard. The one thing I can assure you is that dotCom will still be here in force because the public has embraced dotCom not as a TLD, but as the brand of the Internet.
The QWERTY system on keyboards has to be the most ridiculous thing ever invented. But it was there first and the public embraced it. 135 years later it’s still the standard.
Yes David, YOUR dotCOMs will be here but not 90% of the others. It’s like the reason 9 of 10 new ventures fail. It’s one thing to hold on to a dream. It’s another to build a profitable business. GM can’t do it. So why would you think 86 million domain holders can? Is there even room for 86 million online businesses, or 10 million? Can you name 100,000 that are successful now?
Yes, I agree Owen. I would say there are at least 10,000 highly successful, developed domain names out there with the vast majority being dotCom and the rest being ccTLDs. That may not sound like a lot, but throw in eBay.com, Hotels.com, etc and we’re talking billions, if not trillions, of dollars. It’s the classic adage, 10% of the businesses making 90% of the gross revenue. Domain names follow the same suite.
Google wave might again bring a big shift reducing browser monopoly further