Google asked passers by at Times Square if they could explain what a browser is.
The results are either funny or shocking: 92% of the responders had no idea whatsoever. This renders all the talk about browser wars, standards compliance and the likes quite ironic. Even though it shouldn’t come as a surprise it is still often forgotten in tech-savvy circles that the average user has little knowledge or interest in what happens – so to speak – under the hood of his/her computer.
The video is also definitely food for thought for all the critics of the EU regulations attempting to make Microsoft disentangle Internet Explorer from Windows. I mean if the lion’s share of the users are pretty much ignorant of the very existence or function of a browser how could we assume that they’d know about alternatives such as Firefox or Chrome? It is awfully convenient to just stick with what is on their PCs, which in turn seems to give MSFT a significant leverage, being the single biggest supplier of home and office operating systems.
