Google Chrome?

A picture of a mess of wires

This past week Google released a new browser called Chrome.  Google has been a principle and driving donor to the Mozilla Foundation, the people who brought you Firefox.  Why, then, would they abandon that work in favor of starting from scratch?  There are any number of reasons I can think of, putting aside what they in fact wrote:

  • One of Google’s interests is to be able to compete with Microsoft in the applications space.  Google already has a spreadsheet and a document editor available on their web site for free.  However, the browser interface itself gets in the way of the user experience.  By way of an example, if you wish to save documents to your desktop, something everyone does, one has to invoke a download function, which might in fact cause the document to be displayed in the browser, rather than being saved.  Otherwise it might bring up the download windows, which is rather clunky.
  • To take this a step further, it is equally possible that Google is unsatisfied with the semantics to be found with the combination of HMTL, Javascript, and Java.  One thing we do not see in the announcement, for instance, is a discussion of standards adherence.  Google has a history of attempting to set de facto standards.  The problem with this is that people moving from Microsoft could end up exchanging one evil for another.  Don’t get me wrong- EVERY company wants to play this game.  However, in Microsoft’s case, they are supervised by at least two government bodies to see that their interfaces remain (at least somewhat) open.
  • There is perhaps a more obvious reason.  Firefox in particular is one of the most complex pieces of code in the world, making use of nearly every C++ construct that exists.  Few on this earth are really qualified to make changes to the code because of the level of sophistication.  Sometimes, in such circumstances, starting from scratch is easier.

Is there room in the market for Chrome and whose market share will it take?  My guess is that Firefox will bear the brunt of the loss, but sometimes hype is sufficient to steal from others as well.  If there truly are new capabilities in Chrome, they will quickly find their way into other browsers.  Unless Google encumbers the work in some way, Chrome will end up being a demonstration project.  Of one thing we can be assured: the hackers are still out there, and they will be among the first to use Chrome, to find its weaknesses, and to exploit them.  We can say that the other browsers are well vetted (yes, even IE).  Here is another opportunity for PCs to be 0wn3d.

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