Another Safari Browser for Windows

[img]http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u139/gtroyal/safari.png[/img] At face value I and many others don’t think that the world needs another browser on windows. Aside from the prevalent and mediocre Explorer, there are some excellent browsers like Firefox, Mozilla, Opera and others that do a good job providing a good browser experience. So the release of the Safari Browser for Windows is not in itself an earth moving event. However it would be a very brave person who will bet against Steve Jobs in fulfilling his destiny to take over the home entertainment experience and to be the world’s largest consumer electronics company. However in order to be the world’s greatest consumer electronics company in the 21st Century is about access to bandwidth and networks. He does not need to own the network, just control access to it and to a deep pocketed partner such as ATT and to be able to sell stuff to ATT including Apple TV. This is Bob Cringely’s theory you can read about it here. Dvorak has his take and that is the Google Paid Search for the Safari is a $50M business which also makes up all of Mozilla Foundation’s revenue. This is a perfectly reasonable explanation and it allows Apple to remove a cost center and allow them to do some investment in this area. Dvorak is absolutely right however that the widget business is going to be very big. Applets that build value into a core platform is very valuable in building out a strong ecosystem. If Apple wants widget developers for the Mac, iPhone, Apple TV then it needs to support Windows development so this also makes sense. Overall the announcement that allows Apple to increase revenue for the Safari browser, bring Windows developers into the eco system and invest in improved functionality makes good business sense. However it is far more fun to speculate on MS-Apple conspiracies.