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Google Chrome heats up browser wars

Stephen Shankland CNET News.com

Published: 03 Sep 2008 11:50 BST

Google Chrome is a warning shot over the bows of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera.

The open-source software project should dispel any lingering thoughts that the browser wars are over. The competition may be less cut-throat now than in the 1990s, but one of technology's most powerful companies is now on the battlefield.

So how does Chrome change the competitive landscape?

Initially, at least, Chrome is unlikely to change the market-share rankings. According to Net Applications' browser market-share statistics for August, Internet Explorer (IE) has 72 percent share, Firefox 20 percent, Safari six percent, and Opera one percent.

However, even before Google's browser became available for download, the repercussions of its release rippled throughout the industry. There are plenty of implications that arise when a company as large as Google builds a browser tuned to advance the company's agenda of web-based applications.

Here are some possible implications for the four major alternatives to Chrome.

Internet Explorer
IE can still claim the dominant share of the browser market, and it still has the hard-to-beat distribution channel of being built into the most widely used operating system.

Firefox has been chipping away at IE's share for years, but IE has been able to maintain its dominance. Unless Chrome is seen to offer revolutionary new abilities, it's not likely to do more than increase the rate of chipping.

Microsoft has lit a fire under its IE team and, given that Google is such a powerful Microsoft rival, that fire doubtless will burn all the hotter because of Chrome. The forthcoming IE8, with Beta 2 released last week and the final version officially due to ship by the end of January, is a sign of how serious Microsoft is.

Officially, Microsoft welcomes the competition. "The browser landscape is highly competitive, but people will choose IE8 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," Dean Hachamovitch, Internet Explorer general manager, said in a statement.

Vast numbers of people haven't upgraded from IE6, which is ancient in internet years. That cuts both ways for Microsoft: it's hard to get people to upgrade to IE7, nevermind IE8, but those users aren't moving to the competition either.

Of course, with Google's web-application agenda, the more serious long-term threat is to Microsoft's Office team, not to the IE team.

Firefox
Firefox potentially stands to lose the most from Chrome's arrival.

It's the leading alternative to IE and the standard-bearer for those who favour open-source software over Microsoft's technology, business practices and philosophy. If you're hell-bent on taking down Microsoft, you could pick worse allies than Google.

Mozilla has something for the philosophical purists that Google lacks, though: a measure of independence. "Uniquely in this market, we're a public-benefit, non-profit group, with no other agenda or profit motive at all," Mozilla Corporation chief executive John Lilly said in a blog posting on Monday.

However, survival is a powerful motive, even if profit isn't, and the Mozilla Foundation, the parent of the Mozilla Corporation, relies on Google for tens of millions of dollars each year in exchange for prominent placement of Google in the browser's search. Happily for Mozilla, Google just signed up for three more years of subsidising Mozilla, so Firefox and other foundation activities should be financially sound for the time being, at least.

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Firefox has built a substantial grassroots fan base. Even Google, for all its charisma, money and power, will have a hard time replicating that.

Finally, although Chrome on first impressions is bad news for Firefox, there's a subtler reality at play: IE is the dominant browser, and the greater the number of credible underdogs that exist, the more that dominance can't be taken for granted. Don't be surprised to hear Mozilla and Google present themselves more as allies than foes.

Safari
Apple has expanded its Safari ambitions from Mac OS X to Windows, most notably by letting the browser hitch a ride along with the iTunes update software. However, Safari has yet to become a force to be reckoned with.

But Safari could benefit indirectly from Chrome: both browsers are based on the open-source WebKit rendering engine.

If Google sponsors aggressive WebKit development — and doesn't end up wrestling with Apple for power over the project — both browsers stand to gain. Google's Android browser for mobile phones, it should be noted, is also based on WebKit.

Opera
Opera has a small share of the browser market, so it's the most likely to drop in position if Google Chrome proves popular. Opera already fights for relevance against the bigger players.

However, Opera is a scrappy company. Not surprisingly, it prefers to look at its own growth rather than its sliver of share, and chief executive Jon Tetzchner pointed out that its share has grown each time a new browser has emerged as a viable competitor to IE.

"Last year, we had more than 50 percent growth in our user base," Tetzchner said. "I think we'll do quite well this year as well. It seems that, every time there's talk of new browsers, that's been a positive thing for us. It has been good there is focus on browser alternatives."

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