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You occasionally have to feel sorry for Microsoft. It spends years and untold millions developing Vista, and within months of its launch it's been usurped by a free piece of software that has a fraction of the code and development costs of Windows. And, worse still, Microsoft's had the software in its pocket for years.

The operating system era is drawing to a close; the software that's set to dominate the next decade of computing is the web browser.

Over the years, the browser has evolved from a simple piece of software for reading web pages to full-blown runtime environment. The browser now provides access to increasingly sophisticated online applications, performing tasks such as video editing that were beyond the average PC not so long ago.

The browser's even become a pseudo OS in its own right, allowing users to install their own mini-applications on top of the browser core. In fact, it's these extensions that have helped make Firefox the first serious threat to Internet Explorer in the best part of a decade. Software companies aren't obsessed with getting developers to code for their operating system any more; they want them coding for their browser.

Take Apple, for example. Why did it release Safari for Windows? It isn't as if there's huge demand for another PC browser and, even if there was, it wouldn't be Safari. It isn't even that popular with Mac owners: only a tenth of them who visit Macuser.co.uk actually use Apple's browser.

Apple hasn't even made the effort to tailor the browser for Windows like it did with iTunes. Everything from the transparent menus to the Mac OS X style of resizing the browser window smack of a product that's been hurriedly ported.

So why the rush? With the iPhone launching in the US with Safari onboard, Apple desperately needs those software developers to start taking its browser seriously. Safari's fine for browsing the headlines on the BBC or your photos on Flickr, but ask it to do something a little more demanding and you're often met with a blank screen.

I discovered this to my cost when I used a PowerBook on a recent trip abroad and attempted to log in to my Yahoo webmail account, only to be greeted with a message informing me its new email client doesn't support Safari. iPhone customers won't be

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impressed when their browser hangs up on their favourite web services, hence Apple's hasty attempt to steer Safari into the mainstream.

IE wobble

Yet, it isn't only browser minnows such as Apple that have cause for concern. Even Microsoft and its 80% IE market share is looking vulnerable. Ask any computing enthusiast what his favourite Firefox extension is and he'll probably struggle to choose from one of half-a-dozen. Ask that same person what his favourite IE add-on is and he'll wonder what you're talking about. IE might still be the division's heavyweight, but Firefox has the momentum.

It isn't only developers who are standing foursquare behind Firefox - it has powerful allies in the internet world, too, not least Google. The Mozilla Corporation is working closely with Google to implement offline features in Firefox 3, which will allow users to continue using web applications even when a network connection isn't available. If Firefox becomes the first browser to allow you to write and browse Gmail messages offline, it could be a huge unique selling point.

Even more worryingly for Redmond, Google and Mozilla are plotting features that will cut Microsoft out of its own products. The Mozilla Corporation has told PC Pro it's developing a Firefox feature that will detect the type of file you're clicking on and find a relevant online service to open it with instead of downloading it to the desktop. The example it gave? Automatically opening Word documents in Google Docs. The chill now running down the spine of Office product managers will probably be enough to counteract global warming by itself.

Google has long been rumoured to be developing its own browser, but with friends like Firefox, why bother? The Firefox homepage already defaults to Google's search engine, and if Google can keep sending Firefox's ever-expanding user base to its host of online services it will be an enormous commercial advantage.

This all leaves Microsoft with a huge problem. If the shift towards online applications continues apace, the operating system - be it Windows, Mac OS X or Linux - could become little more than the platform the browser runs from.

The only way Microsoft can stop ceding users to Firefox is to once again make its browser the best there is. If Bill Gates hasn't already ordered his developers to make IE8 the best damned piece of software they've ever designed, his company could be heading for retirement with him.