Is Random Browser Really Random?

After a bitter debate, the European antitrust administrators and Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) agreed to provide a ballet screen that will give European population an opportunity to download and use any internet browser, all of them Microsoft Internet Explorer’s rivals. The gang of rivals ready to compete includes Safari (AAPL), Google Chrome (GOOG), Opera and Firefox.

The page will contain, by next week, links to download any of the available browsers. However, the order of list will change every time the user refreshes the page. According to the antitrust administrators of Europe, this is probably the best way to make people aware about the other available browsers. The static page browserchoice.eu runs Javascript, which keeps of track of jumbled lists and automatically rearranges itself.

Microsoft isn’t definitely doing itself any favor. In fact, this ballet page seems to offer an advantage to Google Chrome. Out of every four hits, the list displays Chrome more than once on the extreme left corner, which is nothing but the first choice. Besides, more than 50% of the results put Internet Explorer on the extreme right corner, which is probably preferred last.

However, it is quite inappropriate to say that there’s a conspiracy involved. Maybe tens of thousands of results – and reports based on them – are just not enough to arrive at a conclusion. Also, according to DSL.sk, the option on the extreme left may not necessarily be assumed as the best browser. In fact, humans generally prefer the one that’s available in the center. And after using all of them, people will certainly make their own conclusions and choices.

But flaws are more consistent than the results. The randomness tested on IE6, IE7, and IE8 showed results favoring Google Chrome and constantly put IE on the extreme right corner. But when this test was conducted on Firefox, results revealed quite different story. So, the theory adopted by DSL.sk to generate random results can still be questioned.

Meanwhile, DSL.sk team is constantly working uninterruptedly and changing the code to ensure unbiased results. And they are pretty sure they will be successful before it goes live.