Why It’s Not Enough To Have All The Greatest Features

By | July 28, 2007


Web BrowsersIt’s pretty obvious that we all want fast and feature rich browsers. That isn’t exactly a secret, therefore, I’d like to talk about some of the “harmful” effects and why it’s not enough to have all the greatest features.

OK, let’s go straight to the point.

Why it’s not enough? Imagine that there is a new web browser, FavBrowser 1.0. It’s brand new, only people who are reading this blog know about it. So it gets like 10 000 downloads, well… That’s good, right? NO. You see, let’s say that FavBrowser 1.0 is the world’s most secure browser, also with some of the most stunning features and just the best one there is. Is this good? No. It’s actually bad. Why?

10 000 users are using this web browser… Browser receives a market share of 0.00001% or something like this, and what the other web browser developers do? They take most popular FavBrowser features and integrate them into their web browsers…

What’s then? They are popular web browsers, so they get huge boost and lots of attention, market share grows… While FavBrowser 1.0 gets less attention, other web browser’s market share is already gaining very fast (with “stolen” features). So I am developing FavBrowser 2.0 and I have better greatest ideas. I release it, same happens again, I get market share of 0.00002%, other web browser developers steal my features again and what’s then? That makes it almost impossible to compete with them anymore, they are gaining market share very fast, I am out of ideas, FavBrowser 2.0 dies…

I am not sure if you got my point, so will try to explain. What did I wrong? I should get investors, buy advertising, get lots of attention and that’s all… So my point is: it’s not enough to have all the greatest features, it’s enough to develop a good marketing strategy. With no advertising good products will die, and with good advertising even the worst products will be popular.


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism career back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

Comments (7)

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  1. Saito says:

    I’m impressed this entry, so I translated the whole of it into Japanese, before your permission. Forgive me. If you have any problem, I will delete it as soon as possible.

  2. Wow. Sure, I allow you to do that, anyone can translate into any other language. I will be very happy :-)

    Thanks for nice words.

  3. cousin333 says:

    Well, is this entry about Opera and Firefox? :P

  4. Daniel Hendrycks says:

    Opera must have advertisements or some sort of event.

    hopefully they’ll go with this, but they have failed to comment so far! :(
    http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=275740

  5. Morbus says:

    This.

    This is the reason why Open Source is the future. Why Firefox is so good and why Chrome has a chance. Nothing else.

    With open source, you don’t care who “steals” what, because it’s all open. Besides, it’s good to have low market share. It means less security issues.

  6. ice trey says:

    i agree 110 pcg to Morbus post, Open source IS the future, its progress, development and creative, whereas m$, Apple and google is all about maintaining the status quo for their shareholders, theyre not interested in “risks”, only $$$ and thus ALL truly good and innovative inventions can only come from the Open source community