Traditional intermediaries might include wholesalers and retailers, but many firms are now finding that companies like Google [search] and even web browsers [Internet Explorer] are acting as intermediaries between them and their markets.
Without working well and effectively with these new categories of intermediary, an organisation may fail to meet its marketing objectives - in a similar way that making a bad retailing, logistics or banking decision might have a negative impact.
As an Old Person, I have habitually used Internet Explorer for a decade and more. A highly unscientific poll of students suggested that Chrome from Google was very popular.
I thought I'd see what hard data could say.
A nice webbie with some geeky online toys is http://gs.statcounter.com - you can vary time period, geographic focus and the tech that is charted - browsers, search engines, operating systems etc.
Below is a chart of the market share at a global level of web browsers in the last 4+ years
Look at the converging lines for IE and Chrome. If these trends continue, in the very near future IE will no longer be the market leader and Chrome will have taken over. This may surprise people who automatically assume Microsoft is the leader in markets within which it operates.
