The competition among Web browsers has taken some interesting turns over the past few years, with players like Mozilla’s Firefox and Google Chrome taking a chunk out of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer market share. Additionally, Mac users have more options than ever making Safari less popular.
While the features and functions of these Web browsers are likely to be debated for years to come, I started to wonder which has the best brand identity. Certainly, Internet Explorer has history on its side, but Chrome has the power of Google behind it. Firefox is known for add-ons and has become a relationship brand more so than any of its competitors.
But what do we think of each brand’s logo? Which do you think is best in terms of communicating the brand image? Which is simply designed the best?
Take the poll below and leave a comment to share your opinions. Which Web browser is getting its brand identity right, including its logo?
Susan Gunelius is the author of 10 marketing, social media, branding, copywriting, and technology books, and she is President & CEO of KeySplash Creative, Inc., a marketing communications company. She also owns Women on Business, an award-wining blog for business women. She is a featured columnist for Entrepreneur.com and Forbes.com, and her marketing-related articles have appeared on websites such as MSNBC.com, BusinessWeek.com, TodayShow.com, and more.
She has over 20 years of experience in the marketing field having spent the first decade of her career directing marketing programs for some of the largest companies in the world, including divisions of AT&T and HSBC. Today, her clients include large and small companies around the world and household brands like Citigroup, Cox Communications, Intuit, and more. Susan is frequently interviewed about marketing and branding by television, radio, print, and online media organizations, and she speaks about these topics at events around the world. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google+.
Who cares about their brand identities? It’s the quality of the browsers that should matter. All of them work reasonably well except Internet Explorer. Firefox is the best because it has the best user interface and has the most addons. The rest is all fluff.
If you are interested in learning more about some of the better alternatives browsers out there (NOT Opera or Safari etc.) then you might want to check out this post detailing 7 of the better browsers available for free on the internet:
http://ninjarabbits.blogspot.com/2009/11/alternative-web-browsers.html
Hi Susan-
This is a great topic to consider today, giving the unveiling of the new Aol. logo.
My personal fave of all the logos is the one for Firefox. I love how the fox (an animate being) wraps itself around the world. It’s a living thing, active, and embracing.
Contrast this to the IE logo, which says ‘the world revolves around us”.
The Chrome logo is butt-ugly (despite how much I otherwise use Google) and the Opera one is ‘eh’.
Safari is all about the tool as a tool.
The Netscape logo is just plain outdated.
I think the brand identities matter a lot, because these logos/icons are ubiquitous. I feel different when I hit the firefox one vs. the safari one, even though they are next to each other in my dock. Also, they work differently, and thus trigger different behaviors and feelings, however micro the level.
My $.02!
cvh
I have tried a few browsers at http://www.multibrowsers.com (there are about 50 browsers there) and liked Maxthon and K-meleon!