Balloting for Your Browser

European PC users are going to have to make a unique choice when they install their next Windows PC: Choose a web browser. This comes about because of their anti anti-competitiveness stance, and their objection against Microsoft’s integration of Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system. So installing Windows PC in Europe, in future, users are going to be presented with a selection of five choices of browsers to install.

These five browsers will be more prominently features because they are “more popular”, although additional browsers will also be available for selection. Which are these five “more popular” browsers?

1. Apple’s Safari
2. Google’s Chrome
3. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer
4. Mozilla’s Firefox
5. Opera

Microsoft has proposed a selection screen featuring the above list in that order. The list is apparently ordered alphabetically by vendor name. You can read more about it in this MacNN post. Whichever way you choose to order the list, someone’s going to have some complaints though. So it is not unexpected that there are suggestions to improve the selection process, such as several listed in Firefox’s designer Jenny Boriss blog post.

Personally, I find it interesting the way descriptions are attached to the browsers. These are:

1. Safari: Introducing Apple Safari 4.0. See the web in a whole new way.
2. Chrome: A new web browser for Windows.
3. Internet Explorer: Making your web even better… Faster, Safer, Easier.
4. Firefox: Can a browser make the Web better? Try Mozilla Firefox and see for yourself.
5. Opera:  Opera browser 10 is Internet browser innovation.

What’s the problem? Safari and Chrome as simply new. Firefox sounds fishy, or at best, questionable. Opera is cloudy.

Why is it that Internet Explorer’s description sounds the most positively concrete in how it is “better”? Suppose you are clueless about which browser to choose. Suppose you had never heard of any of these browsers. Which are are you going to choose? We should try doing a poll. Black out the browser name in the descriptions. Ask users to choose.