"Strategically, it makes a lot of sense to own the browsing experience e2e"
Can you expand on this?
There are a couple of benefits I can think of, but no major ones.
- Quality of experience: owning the browser ensures that sub-par browsers don't degrade the overall experience (such as destroy battery life and overall platform impressions).
- Controlling innovation: If Microsoft feels threatened by HTML then it can limit certain features until native apps catch up. I believe that this is a double-edged sword though, as Chrome and Firefox steadily push forward people are stil unsure if IE can keep up.
Allowing third-party browsers ensures that your platform always has the best browser and the browser is an incredibly important part of the platform.
Personally, I see not allowing alternate browsers as an attack on the browser ecosystem at a time when Microsoft has been trying to be very standards friendly with IE10. For tablets, I use the browser a ton, and being allowed to run the latest and greatest browser of my choice, with WebGL, Web Intents, etc, and not be tied to IE or Safari, is a selling point.
The cynicist in me says that Mozilla's Boot 2 Gecko Phone project most likely will not support other browsers, and Chrome OS doesn't either, so why should Win8. And I think this really sucks.
I don't think Microsoft will make the mistake of falling behind on the web platform again. In fact, their latest moves (both tech, organization-wise) show them throwing more weight behind IE/HTML and less behind .NET/SL/Win32 (this is from me reading the tea leaves from the outside, not any inside scoops).
I'd argue that MS is still falling behind- IE10 is just catching up but has no leapfrogging and how far out is IE11?
Even more critically, look at all of the users MS is leaving behind- no XP support for IE9, will they abandon Win8 users when there's still a massive number of them?
Unless IE ramps up their release cycle I see no way they can stay on the leading edge.
Can you expand on this?
There are a couple of benefits I can think of, but no major ones. - Quality of experience: owning the browser ensures that sub-par browsers don't degrade the overall experience (such as destroy battery life and overall platform impressions). - Controlling innovation: If Microsoft feels threatened by HTML then it can limit certain features until native apps catch up. I believe that this is a double-edged sword though, as Chrome and Firefox steadily push forward people are stil unsure if IE can keep up.
Allowing third-party browsers ensures that your platform always has the best browser and the browser is an incredibly important part of the platform.
Personally, I see not allowing alternate browsers as an attack on the browser ecosystem at a time when Microsoft has been trying to be very standards friendly with IE10. For tablets, I use the browser a ton, and being allowed to run the latest and greatest browser of my choice, with WebGL, Web Intents, etc, and not be tied to IE or Safari, is a selling point.
The cynicist in me says that Mozilla's Boot 2 Gecko Phone project most likely will not support other browsers, and Chrome OS doesn't either, so why should Win8. And I think this really sucks.