Why monoculture on the Web is bad
Thursday, 23. July 2009, 10:02:22
One of the comments on the antitrust complaint against Microsoft I see a lot is: "So what if most people are using IE and aren't aware that there are choices? I'm using Opera/Firefox/Chrome just fine."
Sometimes we may feel that something doesn't really affect us. But does IE's dominance on the Web affect us even though it might not feel that way?
The answer is: Yes, definitely. But the problems with a monoculture on the Web extends beyond browsers! A single point of failure is a bad thing no matter what.
Browser monoculture
The recent ActiveX security flaws in IE once again show us that a browser monoculture is a bad thing because those looking to infect people's computers will have a single target with a very nice return of investment. And those millions of compromised computers can be used for things like sending spam to the rest of us.
But it goes much further than just IE. One could argue that just about any kind of dominance of the Web is a bad thing.
Sometimes we may feel that something doesn't really affect us. But does IE's dominance on the Web affect us even though it might not feel that way?
The answer is: Yes, definitely. But the problems with a monoculture on the Web extends beyond browsers! A single point of failure is a bad thing no matter what.
Browser monoculture
The recent ActiveX security flaws in IE once again show us that a browser monoculture is a bad thing because those looking to infect people's computers will have a single target with a very nice return of investment. And those millions of compromised computers can be used for things like sending spam to the rest of us.
But it goes much further than just IE. One could argue that just about any kind of dominance of the Web is a bad thing.
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