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Even with a minority share, Google has all the initiative in the browser market right now. They have forced their competitors to speed up development and support standards. Rapid releases, HTML 5 support and fast javascript engines benefit google as the overall web experience gets faster.

A secondary benefit for Google is that Microsoft is basically forced to commoditize their own platform APIs in order to stay relevant in the browser market.

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>"in order to stay relevant in the browser market"

The question is, "What is the browser market?"

For Opera, Mozilla and Google (and increasingly for Apple), the browser is critical to their cash flow because it allows them to capture data and monetize it through datamining or through licensing branded versions. For those companies, browser adoption goes directly to the bottom line. But those economics don't really apply to Microsoft's core business of selling software rather than user information. For Microsoft having IE used for 80% of browsing was a liability not an asset - monetizing their near monopoly was not a viable option because of the legal problems it would create.

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