p2pnet news view | Products:- Joe Wilcox thinks Google’s Chrome browser might be a killer app.

But not in a good way.

Its appearance might herald the death of Firefox, he says on eWeek’s Microsoft Watch, kicking off with:

“I’ve often chuckled at No. 6 of Google’s ‘Ten Things’: ‘You can make money without doing evil.’ I hadn’t looked at the list for awhile, but now see that Google has added four paragraphs explaining what it means to not be evil. But evil is often a matter of perspective. Missing from the four paragraphs to No. 6 on the holy list of 10: Thou shalt not screw your partners.”

Because, “From the perspective of some Google search partners, Chrome is evil. For example, Mozilla generates most of its real revenue from that Google search box in Firefox’s right-hand corner. Sure, end users can change the default search engine. But given Google’s huge search share — 61.9 percent in July, according to ComScore — the default is likely to remain the same. Google wants to keep that money it gives Mozilla and other browser developers.

“Chrome will compete with Firefox and other Google search-supported browsers. Oh, yeah, if that’s you, Google is doing evil. If you’re Mozilla and dependent on Google paid search revenue, your browser’s future is perilous. How ironic if Google does to Firefox what Microsoft couldn’t: Kill the browser.”

Should Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer, “piss his pants or throw a chair through his office Window?” – Wilcox wonders,  continuing, “Maybe he’ll do both. Google isn’t just screwing its partners. The company wants Internet Explorer to bend over, too. Evil is a matter of perspective. A Google browser is like Microsoft’s Cloverfield.

Microsoft got into a heap of antitrust trouble for leveraging its dominant desktop operating system into the browser market,” says Microsoft Watch, adding

“Chrome has got to eat up Firefox to gain market share. It won’t immediately come from Internet Explorer. All this presupposes Google will succeed. But, hey, that’s the power of monopoly extending its reach into another market: Google search and advertising tools bundled with Chrome.

Predicting a new browser war three-and-a-half years ago, “I never expected anything so brutal as this,” says the story, adding:

“Google turning on the browsers that helped nurse it and eating them alive. Whoa, that’s not evil?”

But for an alternate view, “At my company, Kloudshare, a big part of what we are developing involves pushing boundaries of what browsers are expected to do,” writes Hank Williams on Why does everything suck?

“Generally speaking this is the case industry wide as the web browser is becoming more and more a real application delivery system,” he says, going on:

“Google understands this issue and has apparently been focused on some of the more glaring weaknesses of the current crop of browsers. As such, they have decided to launch a new browser called Chrome, to try to bring browsers into the 21st century.

“This has the blogosphere all excited. Everyone is writing about the features of the new browser, and its strategic significance. The product sounds great, but I can only get but so excited.

“Why?

“Because as a developer, Chrome seems to me to be little more than pissing in the wind.”

Chrome browser – Google enters browser wars with Chrome, September 2, 2008
Microsoft Watch – Google Eats Its Young, September 2, 2008
Why does everything suck? – Who cares about Chrome. IE6 Has 25% Market Share, September 2, 2008

---

Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!

Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 at 3:14 pm and is filed under Product News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

HOME

Viewed 8498 times