Korea’s Internet Is Mired in a Microsoft Monoculture

Korea is at the cutting edge in technology, the state of the art in e-commerce, an early adopter of third-generation wired and wireless communication, broadband and personal media. Yet 99.9 percent of computer users are on Microsoft Windows. Mac users cannot bank or shop online, nor do these users have access to government websites. The same goes for users of Linux, the free user-generated OS, and those using Mozilla Firefox or Opera to browse the web.

The observation comes from an early 2007 entry on a Japanese blog, written shortly after the blogger’s disappointing visit to Korea. It is not an unfair assessment nor is it borne of jealousy. Korea’s Internet monoculture has been a subject of concern here for some time and remains an issue. In a recently published book, Kim Ki-chang, a professor at Koryo University, says that Korea’s Internet environment is so unsound that nothing like it can be found in any other country in the world.

What is the problem? For one thing, accessing many Korean websites requires jumping through hoops not found anywhere else in the world. This may mean installing unfamiliar software programs, one to ensure secure access, another to protect against keystroke tracking, another for personal firewall protection, and on top of that, an antivirus program, all to be able to do some banking online. Nowhere else are websites so complicated and inconvenient.

It is also a uniquely Korean peculiarity that the programs needed for access to secure websites are compatible only with Microsoft Internet Explorer. Many are based on the ActiveX framework from Microsoft. And while there exist other technologies that perform the same function, none are in use in Korea. As a result, web browsers such as Firefox used by over 20 percent of users worldwide have no presence here.

Not much new here that has not been covered by me in the past but it is news to me that Kim Keechang has published a book on this topic.

October 19, 2009

The Honorable Julius Genachowski, Chairman
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20554

Dear Chairman Genachowski:

We write to express our support for your announcement that the Federal Communications Commission will begin a process to adopt rules that preserve an open Internet. We believe a process that results in common sense baseline rules is critical to ensuring that the Internet remains a key engine of economic growth, innovation, and global competitiveness.

…

An open Internet fuels a competitive and efficient marketplace, where consumers make the ultimate choices about which products succeed and which fail. This allows businesses of all sizes, from the smallest startup to larger corporations, to compete, yielding maximum economic growth and opportunity.

US State Dept. workers beg Clinton for Firefox

US State Department workers have begged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to let them use Firefox.

“Can you please let the staff use an alternative web browser called Firefox?” worker bee Jim Finkle asked Clinton during Friday’s State Department town hall meeting (http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/july/125949.htm).

“I just moved to the State Department from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and was surprised that State doesn’t use this browser. It was approved for the entire intelligence community, so I don’t understand why State can’t use it. It’s a much safer program.”

Presumably, the State Department is using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. And we wouldn’t be surprised if it’s still mired in the eight-year-old IE6. The only thing that moves slower than Orange (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/08/orange_and_ie6/) is a US government agency. But the State Department has yet to respond to our questions about its Firefox-less browsing mandate.

Finkle’s fellow workers responded to his Firefox request with applause. While Clinton responded with bewilderment. “Well, apparently, there’s a lot of support for this suggestion. I don’t know the answer. Pat, do you know the answer?” she said, turning to under Secretary Pat Kennedy.

“The answer is, at the moment: It’s an expense question,” Kennedy said. Then someone in the audience pointed out that Firefox is free.

Philippine Internet users prefer Firefox over IE – CNET Asia Blogs: InfoChat by Jerry Liao, Philippines: Worldwide, the most popular/used browser is Internet Explorer (IE) with a market share of 66.25, followed by Firefox with 26.62, Opera with 2.82, Safari with 2.66 and Chrome with 1.19.

For Asia, IE is still king with 74.45, Firefox with 21.04, Opera with 2.35, Chrome with 1.18, and Safari with 0.76.

For the Philippines, the story is different. According to StatCounter, the most popular/used browser preferred by most Filipinos is Firefox (51.44 percent), edging IE which has 41.85.

While I’m not yet comfortable with StatCounters’ data specifically (I need to better understand their methodology), these recent findings do line up with data from Ken Kovash back at the end of 2008.

Firefox Surpassing 50% Market Share in More Regions: What’s the key takeaway here?

Our market share in the regions above has been growing like crazy. For example, since our July announcement about Indonesia, we’ve seen Firefox’s share in Indonesia pick up another 7%, Slovenia 4%, Slovakia 5%, and the Philippines an astounding 13%!

It’s great to hear that Firefox is so well-loved in the Philippines. If you know of any Philippine Firefox communities, please feel free to leave a comment. Also, if there are any Philippines-based statistics services that cover browser market share (like Net Applications or AT Internet Institute (formerly xiti monitor) , please let us know about them. We’d love to know more about the Firefox users in the Philippines.

All that said, one issue that is facing Firefox users in the Philippines is that many of them (close to 20% by Ken Kovash’s count) are still using Firefox 2, which Mozilla is no longer supporting or updating. PinoyTux and Chin Wong at the Manila Standard have both been kind enough to evangelize upgrading Philippine Firefox users to Firefox 3.

Philippines: 20% are Firefox 2 Users. | PinoyTux Weblog Whatever the reason is [for not upgrading], Firefox 3 is continuously being developed and updated so users can have safer and faster browsing. I encourage users to try and switch to Firefox 3 and hopefully this time, you Firefox 3 will stay in your computer for good. I also encourage other Filipino bloggers to join in spreading the word about Firefox 3.

Manila Standard Today — Much ado about Safari 4: Last but not least, even though Firefox 3.1 is still in beta, I’ve found it fast and stable enough for everyday use—on Linux and Mac OS X. The same just can’t be said of Google Chrome or the new kid on the block, Safari 4.

Window Snyder, Mozilla’s chief security something-or-other (her official title), wants to bring open source practices to the security community.

“At a lot of companies,” she told me recently, “there’s fear around security: you don’t want to talk about what you’re doing around security because one might deem it not enough–or might want to criticize it.” She said most companies have a lot of reasons to keep what you’re doing in security quite, but not Mozilla. “We benefit from being open; it’s the model for us and it’s been successful for us.”

I hadn’t seen this on Planet yet so wanted to make sure folks saw this article.

The winners, kekeke, wrote a Firefox extension which allows users to select any keyword on any website and receive a summary of several Yahoo API search results (Flickr, Map, Knowlege Plus, and Lifestyle), without opening a new browser window. More relevant results will display in a stronger colour and users can save for later, or share results with friends.

TWEAK YOUR BROWSER
Another player involved in Internet speed is the browser you use to navigate the Web. Choosing the right browser has become pretty simple: Most experts recommend Firefox, which you can download free from mozilla.com/firefox.

Firefox’s open-source architecture means it has been tested and tweaked by far more people than proprietary browsers like Internet Explorer from Microsoft. Firefox also uses less of your computer’s memory, freeing it up to handle other tasks. (Microsoft says it will release an upgrade in August that will increase the speed of Explorer.)

But Firefox’s real advantage is its collection of user-generated add-ons. These are small, free modifications to the Firefox browser that can do many things (like change the browser’s appearance, help manage content and integrate third-party search features).

If you’ve ever noticed that a site is slow to load because of graphics-heavy ads, you can install the Adblock plug-in, which eliminates ads from your browser (blocking ads has benefits beyond improving speed — cleanliness and tranquillity [sp] are two that come to mind).

Sites that use a lot of animation (known as Flash animation) can also be slow; Firefox has another plug-in, called Flashblock, that allows you turn the Flash portions of a site on or off. For these reasons, Macintosh users may also want to download Firefox. While Apple’s Safari browser is quick (and far less susceptible to viruses), it does not work with any of these add-ons.

In an information economy, the supply and price of bandwidth matters, in the way that oil prices matter: not just for gas stations, but for the whole economy.

And that’s why there is a pressing need to explore all alternative supplies of bandwidth before it is too late. Americans are as addicted to bandwidth as they are to oil. The first step is facing the problem.

Americans are not the only ones- I would say that anywhere where broadband has a significant penetration there is an addiction to bandwidth.

NY Times, Business section, front page, Monday, May 26th

NY Times, Technology section, front page, Monday, May 26th

The New York Times is my hometown paper, and I’m a regular reader of The Grey Lady, so it’s a pleasure to see Mozilla’s efforts for Firefox 3 profiled in my paper: Open-Source Upstart Challenges the Big Web Browsers.

With tasks like e-mail and word processing now migrating from the PC to the Internet, analysts and industry players think the browser will soon become even more valuable and strategically important.

“People in the industry foresee a time in which for many people, the only thing they’ll need on a computer is a browser,” said Mitch Kapor, the software pioneer who now sits on the board of the Mozilla Foundation and has created a start-up, FoxMarks, that is developing a tool to synchronize bookmarks between computers. “The browser is just extraordinarily strategic.”

That notion has helped to rekindle the browser wars and has resulted in the latest wave of innovation. Firefox 3.0, for example, runs more than twice as fast as the previous version while using less memory, Mozilla says.

The browser is also smarter and maintains three months of a user’s browsing history to try to predict what site he or she may want to visit. Typing the word “football” into the browser, for example, quickly generates a list of all the sites visited with “football” in the name or description.

Firefox has named this new tool the “awesome bar” and says it could replace the need for people to maintain long and messy lists of bookmarks. It will also personalize the browser for an individual user.