Over the last couple of months there has been a re-occuring theme in my conversations with people.  Our true operating system is our Internet browser.  Think about it, where do you spend most of your time when using your computer?  For many users it’s the one application that is always open and receives the most of  their attention.

Without even realizing it the Internet has become the central focus of computing.  The primary driver of computer sales 10 years ago was gaming but now it is clearly the Internet.  While gamers are still a portion of computer purchasers even they need to have Internet.  If you were going to buy a computer today and it didn’t have a way to connect to the Internet would you buy it?

Netbook’s are just that, Internet computers.  Many people are buying them because virtually everything they need out of a computer is available by connecting to the Internet.

The browser market is actually much more competitive than even the operating system market.  Everyone wants a piece of the market and Microsoft’s portion is always on the downward spiral.   Why is this the case? Because as usual Microsoft is missing the big picture and hasn’t realized that an Internet browser is just as important as the actual operating system.  If you were going to buy an OS but couldn’t add anything to it and could only use it “as-is” would you still buy it?

IE 8 is sort of an improvement over IE7 but Microsoft can’t even come close to capturing a decent share of the market without including their browser into their operating system.  Sure security is important but what people really care about is their extensions.  They want their NoScript extension so that when someone Rick Rolls them they don’t have to restart their browser and lose anything else they had open.

I use Opera because it’s fast and efficient.  I hate updates and I hate having to wait for websites to load.  It is the same with operating systems.  We want them to start quickly and operate quickly.  I don’t use a lot of browser extensions just because it provides me with everything I need by default.  The only Widget I use in Opera is the Twitter add-on (@pfoty) but I would probably use more of them if they provided value to me and didn’t slow down Opera.

Maybe all of this is why there is such a push towards Cloud computing,  almost everything we need will be there including games.

Check It Out> Current Browser Market Share, Firefox, Opera, Chrome