Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Chrome browser the (eventual) death of Firefox

I don't buy the notion that Chrome is a major competitor to Internet Explorer. The people who use IE are generally either forbidden from using anything else by their employers or are mainstream users who either find that IE -- which came pre-installed on their PC -- works well enough or simply aren't aware that alternative browsers exist.

I think Chrome could end up grinding the life out of Firefox, though.

Cnet points to a blog post from Mozilla's CEO who tries to whistle past the graveyard, but I thought the critical point from Cnet was this financial tidbit:

Mozilla and Google have had a long and very fruitful relationship. Google is the default search engine on the Mozilla Firefox browser, and the company pays Mozilla large sums for the privilege: $56 million of the $66 million that Mozilla Corp. made in 2006.

That financial arrangement expires in 2011, and I don't see any reason for Google to extend it beyond that point, assuming Chrome isn't a total flop.

If Google does cut its ties with Mozilla, it's hard to see Firefox surviving for long unless Mozilla comes up with a radically different business model.

Mozilla CEO: Chrome was inevitable

Mozilla CEO John Lilly on Tuesday waxed philosophical about the release of Google's new Web browser, Chrome, despite it signaling an attempt by the search giant--and Mozilla's major financier--to become its biggest competitor.

"It should come as no real surprise that Google has done something here: their business is the Web, and they've got clear opinions on how things should be," Lilly wrote in his blog Tuesday. "Chrome will be a browser optimized for the things that they see as important."
Mozilla CEO John Lilly
The beta version of Chrome, to be available later Tuesday for Windows systems, is an obvious alternative to Firefox for those Web surfers fed up with Microsoft's long-reigning Internet Explorer browser.

Mozilla and Google have had a long and very fruitful relationship. Google is the default search engine on the Mozilla Firefox browser, and the company pays Mozilla large sums for the privilege: $56 million of the $66 million that Mozilla Corp. made in 2006.

But Lilly, writing in his blog, said he welcomed the competition posed by Google. Lilly said Mozilla would continue its financial relationship with Google until 2011 and would continue to work with the search giant on technical collaborations such as crash reports system Breakpad.
Paul Kim, vice president of marketing for Mozilla, said that Google staff would be allowed to continue to contribute to the Mozilla Foundation's projects. "As a 100 percent open-source project, we welcome contributions to Firefox from everyone," he said.

"More smart people thinking about ways to make the Web good for normal human beings is good, absolutely," Lilly said.

"Competition often results in innovation of one sort or another: in the browser you can see that this is true in spades this year, with huge JavaScript performance increases, security process advances, and user interface breakthroughs. I'd expect that to continue now that Google has thrown their hat in the ring."

What Chrome means for Microsoft?

Aiming to react quickly to Google's Chrome announcement, Microsoft focused on how Chrome stacks up against Internet Explorer.

"The browser landscape is highly competitive, but people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips, respects their personal choices about how they want to browse and, more than any other browsing technology, puts them in control of their personal data online," Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch said in a statement.

Just last week, Microsoft released the second public beta for its IE 8 browser.(Credit: Microsoft)Hopefully for Redmond, though, it recognizes this as far more than an attack on Internet Explorer 8. Google was already a big supporter and partner of Mozilla. If it really just wanted a better browser, it would have just stepped up its investment in Firefox. In Google's own words, Chrome is as much about being a platform for Web applications as it is a means for viewing Web pages.

"What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for Web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build," Google said on the company's official blog. Although today one needs Windows to run Chrome (Mac and Linux versions are coming soon), it is not hard to see how Chrome is a threat to Microsoft's operating system dominance. Imagine, in the not too distant future, a Linux-based machine with Chrome and lots of Chrome apps. Hmm...That's starting to sound like a pretty big threat to Microsoft indeed. That said, people have predicted the browser would overtake the operating system since the Netscape days and the OS has remained important. The key question for Microsoft is can it create enough experiences that are better outside of a browser/Web app engine to maintain the OS as not just relevant, but worth an extra $100 in the cost of a PC.

The competition, though, is not limited to PCs. A more competitive browser-as-platform from Google could mean more headaches for Microsoft on the mobile front as well. Microsoft is already playing catch-up in the mobile browser arena as it tries to take on the iPhone's Safari browser. Microsoft has promised to have a version of Internet Explorer 6 on Windows Mobile by year's end, but it is unclear how close that will get the company to its already existing competition, let alone new entrants.

Google Chrome - The Reality




From today, Google is entering into the battle of browsers: Google Chrome is in the house! While Internet Explorer -yuck!- continues to lead the market, having it competing with Firefox and now with Google Chrome should be something interesting to see.

Google directives Sundar Pichai -VP Product Manager-, and Linus Upson -Engineerging Director, announced yesterday the launch of the beta version of this new browser in more than 100 countries around the world. Chrome has been built thinking about all this new technologies and web apps that are currently making the web - and also leaving some room for the next generation of web apps.

There are a few remarkable highlights from Google’s browser Chrome:

Google Chrome is open source, which means that its code will be available to everyone and other web browsers developers can take whatever they like from Chrome and use it. Hopefully, this will help make new standards and make all browsers better.

Security matters. Chrome will continuosly download lists of phishing sites and malware. We have already seen some of this on Google’s Search engine - you’ll get a warning if you’re entering a site with suspicious scripts.

Tabs goes first. Unlike Firefox and Internet Explorer, Google Chrome will display tabs on the upper side of the window. Also, each tab will work as an independent process on your system, so whatever happens to one of them won’t affect the rest. A question popped up in my head: how come no one thought about this before?

Built to run fast. Google Chrome will make use of a new Javascript engine called V8. This new engine will add more power to current web apps and also support those yet to be invented. This should improve Javascript’s speed and responsiveness, making web apps faster and also opening new horizonts to invention and creativity. We’ll surely witness the rise of new, and more powerful web apps in the near future.

A better address bar: Omnibox. Omnibox will not only work as a traditional address bar but also will include a more powerful suggestion tool based -naturally- on Google SE.

Here are some screenshots that have slipped into the public and republished at several websites in the last couple of hours:

Google Chrome should be launching today within a few hours from now. What should we expect from it? To be honest, I don’t know. Being a web developer I can only hope that it will comply with Web Standards so I don’t have to use hacks while coding websites to make it look good on Chrome… too - I already have hard times hacking my coding to make sites work on IE.