Thoughts on Chrome & More

Interesting developments in the browser world lately. Between the new beta of IE8 and Google releasing the beta of their new browser (called “Chrome”), not to mention interesting work by the Mozilla team here as well, there’s as much happening as I can ever remember. Let’s start from there: more smart people thinking about ways to make the Web good for normal human beings is good, absolutely. 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.

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, and smart people thinking about how to make things better. Chrome will be a browser optimized for the things that they see as important, and it’ll be interesting to see how it evolves.

Having said that, it’s worth addressing a couple of questions that folks will no doubt have.

1. How does this affect Mozilla? As much as anything else, it’ll mean there’s another interesting browser that users can choose. With IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc — there’s been competition for a while now, and this increases that. So it means that more than ever, we need to build software that people care about and love. Firefox is good now, and will keep on getting better.

2. What does this mean for Mozilla’s relationship with Google? Mozilla and Google have always been different organizations, with different missions, reasons for existing, and ways of doing things. I think both organizations have done much over the last few years to improve and open the Web, and we’ve had very good collaborations that include the technical, product, and financial. On the technical side of things, we’ve collaborated most recently on Breakpad, the system we use for crash reports — stuff like that will continue. On the product front, we’ve worked with them to implement best-in-class anti-phishing and anti-malware that we’ve built into Firefox, and looks like they’re building into Chrome. On the financial front, as has been reported lately, we’ve just renewed our economic arrangement with them through November 2011, which means a lot for our ability to continue to invest in Firefox and in new things like mobile and services.

So all those aligned efforts should continue. And similarly, the parts where we’re different, with different missions, will continue to be separate. Mozilla’s mission is to keep the Web open and participatory — so, uniquely in this market, we’re a public-benefit, non-profit group (Mozilla Corporation is wholly owned by the Mozilla Foundation) with no other agenda or profit motive at all. We’ll continue to be that way, we’ll continue to develop our products & technology in an open, community-based, collaborative way.

With that backdrop, it’ll be interesting to see what happens over the coming months and years. I personally think Firefox 3 is an incredibly great browser — the best anywhere — and we’re seeing millions of people start using it every month. It’s based on technology that shows incredible compatibility across the broad web — technology that’s been tweaked and improved over a period of years.

And we’ve got a truckload of great stuff queued up for Firefox 3.1 and beyond — things like open video and an amazing next-generation Javascript engine (TraceMonkey) for 3.1, to name a couple. And beyond that, lots of breakthroughs like Weave, Ubiquity, and Firefox Mobile. And even more that are unpredictable — the strength of Mozilla has always come from the community that’s built it, from core code to the thousands of extensions that are available for Firefox.

So even in a more competitive environment than ever, I’m very optimistic about the future of Mozilla and the future of the open Web.


  1. Appreciate the transparency in regards to Google Chrome and Mozilla. It's refreshing to see companies that are partners and/or competitors talk respectfully and address issues of customers and the marketplace. Wishing you well and looking forward to more innovation.

  2. I dont think this is not good john .. In my views, Google is trying to become the largest monopoly of web, Think in this way
    You need
    Internet Explorer anyway since microsoft sites wont work best on others
    Firefox ,the best browser in world
    Opera , king of mobiles
    Now chrome , To run google products better
    Aol, Pogo browser
    Yahoo browser , to run yahoo products better
    Salesforce browser, to run salesforce better
    U want to build some new feature then put it in browser and send updates , you will loose standardizing
    It is difficult for developers to build for all

  3. What i meant is “this idea by google is bad”

  4. Hi John,

    I took the initiative to translate your post into French and have posted it on my blog.


    I wanted to write something, but leveraging your work sounds smarter 🙂

    Please let me know if it's an issue.

  5. of the quick review I saw of Chrome, if Firefox could add a bookmarking button right next to the URL box that would be cool…if there is one hidden somewhere, where is it?

  6. No more browsers – please!
    From the developer standpoint: Please, no more browsers – specially when one of them is almost perfect. Orat least heading in that right direction). I can not test web app in 15 environments. I can't. A have to live, too.

  7. Click on the white star next to the URl, please.

  8. Robert (Jamie) Munro

    In FF3, it's really not that hidden. Its a star, right inside the URL bar, not even next to it.

  9. >No more browsers – please!

    No more web engines! More browsers are welcome.

  10. I loved Firefox3 first off, but I'm definitely downloading chrome, I plan to use both somewhat equally. Chrome is being released not as simple competition, but google is encouraging other browser to take what they're doing in chrome and add/adopt it to their own browsers, without the need to cut google in on profits/ ask googles permission/ or be involved with google in anyway, chrome really seems to be googles way to help set a standard for all web browsers (firefox has done an excellent job of this as well) and I really hope to see my 2 favorite iCompanies continuing to work together in the future!

  11. It is already there…and not very hidden too. The star that you see beside the URL, at the extreme right end is the Bookmarking Button on Firefox.

  12. What ever I think, its very hard to compete with Firefox 3.x . Though google is a big name but they need time to compete with Fireforx.

  13. It may seems so, but think more carefully – Google's business is the web. What good will it bring to Google if Google products will only run good on Chrome? I don't think Google will go down to that path.

    The reason Google is doing Google Gears is to bring the next generation browser technologies earlier to the current browsers, so it could take advantage of those technologies for its advantages. In other words, it's trying to standardize the features among the browsers. If Chrome is to only run Google products better, then it would be contradicting with the reason of having Gears.

    I think in order for Google to maintain its status in the web, they will need to use Chrome to push the improvements among other browsers. So it is very unlikely to me to see Google products only run well in Chrome.

  14. What everyone's forgetting in the whole “Google's idea is bad” tirade that people are going on is that Chrome is open-source. That means that Mozilla can (and probably will) adopt ideas from it. Google has said they wanted this to happen. At the very least, I'd love to see Firefox 3 running that sweet new V8 Java VM… My biggest gripe is how all browsers handle flash and javascript. I'm excited about V8 just as much as I am about Chrome itself!

    I think that you're right in your view, John. It's all about people making the web smarter. In an age where the Internet is so important, and yet companies like Comcast and Time-Warner want to cap bandwidth, doing what they can to prohibit the internet's growth, I know that I can always count on Mozilla and Google to be doing what they can to make the web better. Good stuff ahead!

  15. 15 environments?! Sorry to say, if your web app is well designed and well coded, you will not have to spend too much time in making it work in all 15 environments, even if there are so many of them.

  16. I personally believe Google's vision as it's shown in their Comic Book, is to create a new browser from scratch which is written keeping in mind latest Web 2.0 technologies. Though, we've most browsers like IE 6, 7, 8, Firefox 2, 3 Safari 2, 3 and Opera 8, 9 and on and on, they always concentrate more on backwards compatibility with their previous versions and bring down many features from the previous versions while introducing new features to make the version reasonable. However, we can never say most of these web browsers are a clean rewrite like how Microsoft rewritten entirely new for Windows Vista.

    So, if Google comes up with Chrome with actual code that is developed from scratch, I would very well welcome it.

    However, the glitch here is that, Google's Browser is a new entrant and we never know how much standards are accessible in that Browser. Firefox 3 is in my opinion is the BEST Browser of all as of now. Even if we get Google Chrome, I still think Firefox 3 is going to be the Top 1.

    By the way, thanks John for your transparent comments.

  17. Since Google will completely Open Source Chrome, if there are features or concepts that are useful to other browsers, then other browsers can consider incorporating them. (For example sandboxing each tab as separate “processes”.) Simply put, competition leads to innovation. Firefox is an EXCELLENT application, and is the browser-of-choice for many people. Adding another option, especially one from which innovative ideas and concepts can be drawn, can only be good for Firefox.

  18. Google should not have created a new browser, but as you said it was inevitable. The web is google's playground. There are already enough browsers here, one more was't needed. Firefox is a near perfect browser and I'm satisfied with it.

  19. I don't see how it's being rewritten from scratch if it's going to use WebKit.

  20. That's nice and fluffy glass half full stuff. There is also the other side of the coin. Firefox market share appears to have peaked at a global 20%. Chrome appears to have killer features that threaten Firefox – including the ultra-simple (surely?) notion of 'caching' JS as machine code (why didn't someone at Mozilla think of that?). Without Firefox there is no search revenue from Google. The market share of browsers other than Firefox and IE is trivial. If Firefox is threatened and doesn't respond faster and better than it has done to date (we release when we feel like it), where the only real threat has come from the glacial Microsoft, then Chrome could blow Firefox out of the water. This could lead to a browser duopoly between Google and Microsoft.

    A browser duopoly between two goliaths that are duty-bound by american corporate law to serve their own self interest, and therefore that of their shareholders, is not good for the web.

    Let's say that Firefox survives. Arguably Google has enough exposure to push Chrome to a large audience very quickly. Most people who do a search can be offered Chrome and why wouldn't they use it? Lack of extensions? 70% of web users (aka IE users) largely do without extensions. It is feasible that before we see Firefox 4, Chrome could already have taken double digit market share, if not higher. If Firefox maxes out at 20%, is it unreasonable to predict Chrome might eventually take up to 30% or more by the time the Mozilla Google money runs out in 2011? If Chrome + Firefox adds up to a Google search box priority in 50% of browsers, with Microsoft search box priority going to the other 50% of browsers (IE users), what do we have? A web duopoly based on search advertising cash.

    The last time the web had a duopoly (1997, Netscape and Microsoft), it destroyed the web for half a dozen years or half the web's life (Netscape died, Microsoft froze it's development until the rise of Mozilla in 2004). Standards were as much of a mess as they are now. What is to say that another duopoly is not going to kill the web again? The same old issues still exist: an ineffective standards body beholden to, and therefore corruptible by, self-interested browser vendors to the point of slow motion; inconsistent implementations of what standards are eventually agreed upon; staggered release schedules, upgrade uptake and reliable usage metrics meaning developers are never sure what code will achieve the desired output for the vast majority of users.

    What the web lacks is a legal jurisdiction. Self-regulation has failed. Only the legal power of the EU has proved a big enough sword to force Microsoft to come to the interoperability table after the US Department of Slap-on-the-wrist Justice failed to hand down any meaningful anti-trust remedy. The web needs an alliance of legal entities across the major geopolitical zones of the world that can hand down enforceable requirements on to browser vendors. The web is a public utility like any other infrastructure (roads, energy …). It is time for that utility to be governed by representatives of the public, not by silicon valley imperialist technical whims.

  21. That would kill Google's already small business model.
    Most people still use IE, and don't know what a browser is. (IE and the Internet is synonymous to them, one and the same) and on the others side Chrome appears to be meant for more advanced users capable of trouble-shooting multiple processes. Thats not exactly a huge market.

  22. That would kill Google's already small business model.

  23. Any thoughts on how Google/Chrome would react to an Ad-Block plug-in for chrome…?

  24. IE's market share is not static. It's trending downwards on pretty much every survey. The release of IE7 slowed the decrease a bit, but it's still going down.

  25. I believe Google is an amazing company, whatever they make, they make it better. They have been growing strong since its search engine first came out. At first It was small next to yahoo, back in the days.Now its bigger and better then yahoo. It is now small next to Microsoft, but I am pretty sure it will not last long, where Microsoft fails Google does not, releasing something that works. QA, I believe MS has low QA, and Google has a better one. As Google keep making it better products. I believe they will sometime in the future release a OS that will brake Microsoft. Just because Vista is a lame OS, with a terrible performance, not so user friendly, and full of security wholes. These are the points Linux is better, like Ubuntu, Debian etc…
    Although I have not tested the Chrome browser yet,where do I download it from?.
    I think it will be big battle between Firefox and Chrome, I personally have been using Firefox for over 2 years, and it suits all my needs. With so many cool add-ons and such a huge community support, it will be difficulty to make more improvements.But I have to agree that Google web browser has some nice performance, stability and speed innovation.
    From what I understood the browser will not crash because of one single site (witch happens in Firefox), it will just crash a TAB that is amazing to hear! Also the Javascript has been improved with a new V8 Javascript enigne, has some cool technology behind it.
    But Firefox 3.1 is full power and has also the Javascript enhanced by TraceMonkey, Ubiquity, Weave and Firefox Mobile. I think the winner of these battle will be the users who will get better products in a tough competition. But I believe Google will make its browser work better with its own products like gmail, google, etc… Microsoft will keep making it running better for its own products, OWA, hotmail etc… And firefox? Will have to keep up being a well around compatible browser.
    The revolution is here!

  26. Hi John,
    I have to thank all the Mozilla comunity for the development you've been doing so far. As you say, Chrome will bring Google's experience into the browser market. I think that will also benefit all the other browser developing companies, since new usage standards will be understood by everyone.
    Claiming that Google will build a browser from “scratch” is a metaphor. They're building a new browser based on all the other companies that have been building browsers so far.

    I just hope Google will know how to help to create new standards together with other companies and help Web's development; as other companies have been doing; and not create a new “browser war”.
    I'll probably install it, but as I also have been installing other browsers in my computer (namely Opera, IE – which I'm forced too and Safari) I'll continue to give my preference to the truly open-source (open minded) Firefox (installed since its appearance and traveling with me through my OS changes).

  27. Chrome will mean different things depending on who/what you are. The one thing it does mean to everyone though is that the Internet is the operating system, and the clouds are moving closer to earh.

    You are Apple;

    This means that if it were not enough of a conflict of interest (Iphone VS Google's Android) to have Google CEO Eric Schmidt sit on your board – It is now. Look for Schmidt to resign sometime in the next six months.

    If you are Microsoft;

    This means that if you ever considered making Internet Explorer open source in the past, now is the time… You can not afford to wait, not even another minute. Expect Microsoft to make Vaporware like noise over the next few months about cloud widgets to give IE closer ties to cloud based initiatives.

    If you are Yahoo;

    you need to buy Mozilla.

    If you are Firefox;

    Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer…yes continue with your Google revenue deal, but learn how to monetize your Browser outside of a paid search deal. Leverage your large user base to form “spin-off” type “power of the crowd” businesses. Note to Firefox, hey you guys ARE a social network…you just haven't figured that out yet.

    If you are Sun;

    Realize that Java is even less relevant every day. First we kicked you out of client side computing because you were a resource hog. Realize that Java will now continue to be less and less relevant on the Server. What a waste of a good company… McNealy must have got hit in the head with one to many hockey pucks.

    If you are a social network;

    “social networks” would follow along with users in the browser. Truth be told, we thought it would be Facebook, or even more likely Firefox that would lead in this initiative. So if you are a social network, you need to know now Chrome is the first step in a series of moves that will make it unnecessary for your peeeps to ever visit your site (directly) again.

    If you are an application developer;

    Life used to be simple, eh? You knew that you should be developing applications for Windows, because that is where the 100's of millions of users were. Fast forward, and now you need to choose what platforms to support, and when. Of course it makes sense to develop for Windows still, but Apple now has a mass of millions of Mac OSx users, and if it a browser based app, write once for Safari, and it should work without much adaptation on the Iphone. There are over a billion cell phones in use world wide, however every phone requires writing to separately (yes even all those different flavors of Java are different phone to phone. Suddenly with Android coming, and a matching desktop browser you need to be here.

    Lastly if you are a consumer;

    There is always a bottleneck somewhere … Think back 5-10 years ago, before what we now refer to broadband… Dial up was painffulllllyy slow, and when you tried to browse, the bottleneck was in your “last mile” connectivity. Once you got broadband, the lag time in reaching a site was likely in your PC (not enough ram, slow processor, etc). Before either of those issues though it was the software that was not “smart” enough to keep up with the ever faster CPU's being created.

    Look for Chrome to optimize all these new “cloud” based application initiatives like Google Gears, etc. This is just another nail in the coffin for desktop based computing. In 10 years, likely 90%+ of your applications will reside somewhere outside of your home or workplace – but certainly not on your desktop.


  28. Coward Anonymous

    There are at least 10 reasons why Firefox should be afraid of Chrome as listed here (http://www.itproportal.com/articles/2008/09/02/…)

  29. Very nice thoughts out there. Think chrome will defenatly bring innovation to the browser world. Lets wait and see 🙂

  30. I rely nede 2 lern englsh.

  31. John, As you said you have many stuff coming up. You are already a successful man. I am waiting for great new product from you. Thanks for giving us a great product Mozilla Firefox which I am using very successfully.


  33. Heh, you've obviously never written a JavaScript-heavy web app before. Every environment is just different enough to make a coder's life hell.

  34. Chrome uses Webkit, the same engine as is used by Safari, OmniWeb, iCab and more. You only need to test once with each rendering engine.

  35. I don't really think Google is trying to compete in the browser market, they just want to “raise the bar” so that cloud computing becomes more feasible. I think they are just waiting for Mozilla and IE to copy their arquitecture (they even made cartoons to explain it, hoping for peer and media pressure).
    They know perfectly well that they will not be able to mass-distribute a cloud computing application that is only supported by 10% of the market (assuming they will achieve that market share).

  36. Is Chrome going to be using Webkit (heard rummors about it). If yes, that'd be awesome – the same engine as is used in OmniWeb and Safari.

  37. let us see how is chrome first

  38. We will just have to see the final result when its launched.

  39. I really didn't see much, if any truth or facts behind those reasons…

  40. Keep this in mind:

    MS is an evil empire in OS and Google is an evil empire in Web.

    I think using Chrome will keep track of everything you do online.

  41. AS much as there is collaborative language … Uh, uh if there was ANY way possible Google can go indy of Mozilla and steal all their thunder … they'd do it in a heartbeat!

  42. The last thing the Web or for that matter the software market needs is more laywers. If you have a better product put it on the market. There are enough options in the market to never use another Microsoft or Google Product. Just because consumers choose not to doesn't mean that we have to resort to lawsuites.

  43. Dude, this was exactly my thought just now! 🙂

    The funny thing about this situation is that I got to this post using Google search, hehehe!

  44. This is FAR FAR from a Mozilla killer.

    1-It's yet to be supported on Linux (I have no clue the Linux/WinX–ratios), however I bet a large portion of the “GeeK” base makes up Firefox usage (like me).

    2-In my opinion, the “USER BASE” for Chrome, are going to the the “hard core” Google Fans (Gmail users, IGoogle users, etc.)—for example my 70+yr old father, he loses his IGoogle Home Page settings and he thinks “the internet” is broken and he can't get on…..*grin*

    3-Chrome has a LONG way to go. (I downloaded a few hours ago. The “version number” is (….not even a 1.x….

    4-TRUST ME, it's FireFox Google will reach out to/embrace to gain market share. (that's an Immediate 20%)—
    “by default”, over night I bet Google has a 10%+ share “just because” it's Google….

    WIll be interesting to see which broswer get's cannibalized most…..
    MY Wager…..8% comes from I.E. drop, 2% Firefox drop (curiosity seekers from the Geeks–like me).

    In the short term, the browser usage will hover around 5-7% (as the “I hate MSFT crowd embraces it, curiosity seekers abandon it).

    Long term….it will do NOTHING BUT chew away at I.E. Base…plain an simple……

    Mozilla has ZERO to be fearful of (and if ANYTHING should be dancing in the streets that the “Google OS” rumors are actually Webbased BRowers (vs OS Kernel based).

    Just my opinion.

  45. No one can guarantee that webkit engine used by chrome will not have their own bug fixes, enhancements,additions, etc.

    This is happening with Gecko engine – used by Firefox, K-Meleon, Epiphany, etc. – all of them behave differently.

    So yes, you will have to test on all of them. And on all OS'es that it's could be ran on.

  46. Johnny peddling drugs?

    Even if you sold cocaine online, “tracking everything you do online” shouldn't be a problem for users. It's not as if they hire MBA's and graduates to watch all that users do on the web.

    I understand that they track user behavior. This is primarily for ad serving and logging statistical info, with the latter feeding Google's “thought furnace”.

    MS has always been about increasing profitability with hard, mafia type deals while Google has based it's profitability on factors such as trust and quality.. much like Mozilla. It's only fair that Google makes money from mostly all quality products that they bring to you for free.

  47. Johnny peddling drugs?




  48. First impression – Google took some version of Firefox and hacked it to look “different.” Move the Favorites start to the left, move the table above the adress bar and get rid of the search option (because they don't want you to have an option – duh) – done. Since Firefox 3 came out – it has gotten exponentially better on daily basis at times. So – really just find a way to kill IE (and MS if possible) and make Firefox even more awesome. Firefox should get rid of the search option and just have the search work in the address bar and give the use the option to move the tabs below or above the address bar – now you've got Chrome and then some.

  49. I don't see as much innovation as everyone else here seems to see – or at least a lot of people here seems to see. Okay, it has a faster JS engine and someone here says “Why hasn't Firefox thought about this?” Well, they have. That's what TraceMonkey is. How fast Google's JS engine is, will show once TraceMonkey becomes part of Fx (TraceMonkey can speed up Fx JS dramatically!). Many of the other features are already available for Fx as extensions, others will be ported as extensions, just wait for it. Even emulating the look&feel of Chrome is possible, because Fx has skins (Chrome has not, has it?). Google brags about their great, new garbage collector. Fx has a great new garbage collector as well since Fx 3, one of the reasons why Fx 3 uses less memory than Fx 2. Google brags about how using separate processes per tab lowers memory consumption, because it fights fragmentation. Fx 3 fights fragmentation as well and does not need multiple processes for it. Google brags about how much better it is to have separate processes, because if one tab crashes, the browser as a whole won't. Actually this is just an excuse for buggy software. A good browser never crashes to begin with! A had no Fx 3 crash and I was user since day one (actually I was already beta user and had no crash so far). They brag about their sandboxing system, having different access rights for different web pages. This is something I hated at IE, this stupid zone model. A browser should always be secure; period. I don't wan to have to decide which page is more or less secure, I want it secure on all pages. And they brag about how they can make you surf completely anonymous in some kind of “don't store cookies or cache data” mode. IIRC that was possible in Fx 2 already, it's just not directly part of the browser, you need to install an extension; but the feature was there, if you needed it. Finally they brag it was written from scratch. One of the biggest, hardest parts of a browser is the renderer (leaving aside JavaScript it basically makes up 80% of the browser), and this was not written from scratch, it is Webkit, the biggest, most fundamental part that makes up a browser was not written from scratch.

    I'm not against the fact that Google has a new browser, but they are trying to sell disadvantages as advantages; they are trying to sell cold coffee as new innovation, they are not dishonest. And I strongly dislike that.

  50. Johnny peddling drugs

    The IE troopers: 70% of online users use IE, and most of them do not know the concept of a web browser even. Unless the Google word of mouth bug bit 'em, they're gonna continue living on the moon.

    The FF troopers: Now, on the other hand, how many OS's come with Firefox installed in them? By logic, I'm assuming that almost all Firefox users use Firefox because they took the initiative of installing it. And this is because they know or heard that firefox is a better option than IE or Safari.

    With this assumption, I'm certain that a significant number of Firefox users on windows will d/l Chrome and run it side-by-side with FF just to check it out. I'm trying to say that Chrome will def eat into FF market share.

    I've spoken purely from a market share point of view. FF will however, survive the market “cannibalization” simply because of its proven quality standards.

  51. Chrome: it's very light, and therefore very fast, which will make a difference to very heavy web users. So as a web user I love it. As a web developer though, it has nothing like even a fraction of the excellent plugins available for firefox. That's where the frontline will be.

  52. So, I'm in Chrome right now and, at least on my computer, it's slightly faster than IE8. Both Chrome and IE8 are running a little faster then Firefox 3. Overall, I like all of the browsers right now and I really like the way that Google is trying to push the tech forward. Hopefully, once IE8 is launched and people take advantage of it being mostly standards based this time around we'll be able to stick with one browser.

    It may never happen but it would be nice to see all of the big names of the web come together and make one browser to rule them all.

  53. Competition is a beautiful thing and will drive Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla and Google to all innovate, where previously the browser wars cooled down for a while. We the Internet community can only win.

  54. It would be nice to add more developer tools into the browser. I like this option in Chrome. But I hope it could be a developer oriented browser where there are obvious hints at cross browser dysfunctions. We don't need commercial browsers (firefox is the best) but need more developer oriented browsers. Google please listen to us.

  55. I think Firefox will lost its place in the market… IE's are still IE's users not because they think it's better. They are IE's users because they didn't need install anything (half of all users of the web uses IE6, I can't believe they think this is a great browser). Firefox users are people that dares to change, that can see things can be better and try it. This people will try Chrome, and maybe will like it.

    I must say, i'm a Firefox' user for a long time. I just like it, but mainly i like its extensions.

    Firefox 3 is good, we can say better than FF2 or FF1, but I just can't say it is an “incredibly great browser”.
    Firefox makes me mad when i try to use it in my Ubuntu. And as I don't expect it will get better in Linux (it is an known problem at least since 2001 – https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=90198), I hope Chrome get very popular to get as many extensions as FF has. And then I'll definitely change.

  56. You Firefox folks MUST address the two following problems:

    1) Multi threading. WHAT an obvious solution Google came up with!!! Oh so many problems it fixes in one sweep. My oh my I just love that. Please don't come with that stuff about “one thread should be enough for everyone”, because it is just dumb. My web experience is AWFUL using Firefox with lots of tabs. I sit fuming for way to much of the day because of this single threading.

    2) Memory consumption. How can this Firefox thing eat 1 gig of memory when I just have about 20-30 tabs up, displaying complex webpages?! See, I know it is a bit – but I can't accept 1 gig at any rate. And Chrome uses less than a tenth for the same set.

  57. As much as I think Google has done a huge amount for the internet, I don't believe their policies are always favourable for web users. Their stance on privacy is poor, they seem to have tracking code on virtually every webpage, whether through delivering adverts, offering searching or as part of Google analytics. They are also integrated into most of the main browsers (IE8, FF, Opera etc). This offering from them further increases their stranglehold over the internet and users' experiences.

  58. dude, i'm totally with you. I never realized how many of my usual (and favorite) pages have so many ads. It's distracting. Also, I miss my 'search imdb.com' plugins and such. but it's just the first week so maybe by next week things will improve. anyhow, for now, i'm heading back to firefox. i have more control there….

  59. Interesting because V8 seems to be further along than tracemonkey, and provide additional optimizations. Any chance of ditching tracemonkey for V8?

  60. I found a site http://www.googlechromebrowser.org – they let you post full articles abouyt your google chrome experience and reviews also. Just wanted to share that,

  61. Firefox has been doing great while still, even without Chrome, needs to significantly differentiate itself from other competitors in order to gain greater market share (leave alone leading the market). Repeating some of the thoughts here, Google's entering the browser market can be a driving force for browser innovations and breakthroughs –with end users as the winner. Mozilla can take this as an opportunity, with Google's financial contract at hand, to speed up its development process and increase its user base (e.g. doubling its downloads to 1 billion)…till then, the competitive landscape will be something people can hardly predict precisely from now.

  62. Let's see. I have installed and worked with the chrome but i think (this may be earlier to say) but the confidence that i have with mozilla i haven't got with any other brwser.

  63. I think Google Chrome can affect Mozilla much more than anything else. Surely more than closed products like IE or Opera.

    Not only it introduces some new concepts, but being open, Mozilla can easily take ideas and code from Google Chrome to improve Firefox, although some key aspect of Chrome would probably require a massive redesign of Firefox.

  64. “Chrome”…. isn't that a term *you* folks use? I know there is a Chrome directory in the ..profiles directory. This seems like a deliberate thing on Google's part.

  65. Chrome is a very good browser but its interface is really bad.

    No I know what I want: I want something as flexible as Firefox, with all those extensions (that is a MUST-HAVE) but with a rendering engine and javascript engine beneath that are as fast as Chrome's. That separation of tabs in processes its a great idea too. Look that there is nothing that IE uniquely offers that's worth to me… Incognito and IE's equivalent are a nicety, but far from imprecindible, and could be probably accomplished in FFX with addons if desired.

  66. Those who has gone by the way of a fox hardly probable to return on a fork.

  67. I like the in privacy of IE and incognito of Chrome. I think those will be valuable featuers. Firefox needs to do something quick about privacy modes to get some footing. Google got a lot of hype and was even on my local TV news at 11 showing what consumers thought of it at a Worst Buy store. I think Incognito will be at the heels of Firefox. I personally won't be abandoning Firefox unless Incognito can save sessions and is supported with my crop of plugins.

  68. Did you even read anything? It uses WebKit, which is the same old engine used in Safari and Konqueror, and possibly a few others as well…

  69. Just my 2 pence… but i'm finding with an average pc… Chrome is working immensily faster than both Firefox (my fav browser so far) and IE… it starts faster, it loads pages faster, it just feels smoother…

    it's unbloated and does what i need…. now who's going to write me the web dev plugin????oh.. and eye dropper…??? oh and i do like the….. will this also suddenly become bloated?

  70. Browser war is turning into a World War II. US (Chrome) just entered with its large economy. England (Safari) just wont surrender and Russia (Firefox) is getting stronger each day. Against the French Resistance (Opera) attacking from inside, Germany (IE) is slowly loosing because of too many fighting fronts. Will the Open Web win? 🙂

    Seriously, Chrome is good news for all browsers, except for IE!

    Microsoft is just a company trying to survive in their own way. But that is not an excuse for making a extremely bad browser. IE is the worst browser for web applications ( http://kourge.net/node/122 ), and Google is all about web apps. With a big brand name, Google can lower IE share numbers much faster then Firefox. All browsers can win in this, because different users want different things and lower IE share means bigger shares for all the rest.

    I just have to wait for the Linux version. 🙁

  71. Open sourcing chrome answers some of your concerns in that other established browsers can cherry pick their improvements and speed the release of the code. I see chrome as providing a shock to MS and forcing them to improve and open up. IE is truly old architecture and we need to move forward. Competition is the answer not simply the status quo

  72. despite the rumors, i'm finding Chrome's speed to be inconsistent; it seems to alternate between going lightning fast and then hanging for no apparent reason…

  73. I think the thing will automatically search imdb.com once you do a search on the website itself. The option is automatically added to your list of search engines: start typing “imdb” into the address bar, and an option to search IMDB pops up. Cool.

  74. okay has anyone found that with their laptop mousepad that you can scroll down but not back up again. My, and my daughter's laptop mousepads are acting the same way with chrome but not with firefox or IE. is there some setting I'm missing

  75. “But Firefox 3.1 is full power and has also the Javascript enhanced by TraceMonkey, Ubiquity, Weave and Firefox Mobile”

    do you know if apart of this wonderful technologies 😉 the Firefox team plans to fix the “print selection” infamous bug ( it is 4 years old)? i'm tired of getting blank pageswhen i print

  76. I downloaded it. What a horror to get set up. But the real nightmare is how incredibly slow it is. Web sites I normally take a few seconds to access takes minutes. Half the time it reports the website is unavailable.

    Too little too soon. Back to the drawing board.

  77. Javascript coder

    Not really,everything I write works in everything else

  78. Google, won't and can't quit till they're at the top of the food chain – in all areas right through web content, web cash and now web portal.

  79. Javascript coder

    > If you are an application developer

    I'm an application/web developer and excited to see the new possibilities that Chrome brings with the new Javascript engine, application shortcuts, and other new annovative features. To me that just means I can be more creative. Embrace change,and speak for yourself if you don't want to.

  80. I didn't see much, if any non-truth behind those reasons…

  81. What about all the speed improvements? Firefox takes 10-30 seconds to load on my Windows XP, 2 gig ram machine. Chrome loads as soon as i click the icon. The sites also open in a heartbeat.

  82. > Actually this is just an excuse for buggy software. A good browser never crashes to begin with!

    Then why do we see the 'Restore previous session / Start new session' dialog box so often with firefox? Cmon, give credit where credit belongs. Chrome has done a great job

  83. Lol, you must be on windows 98

  84. I'm scared…

    I love Firefox. Google, please don't kill the fox… :'(

  85. Either your lying or you write elementary code. Try building a UI that has elements dragging, dropping, image-less gradients or shapes and you'll know what we're talking about..

  86. This is a common misconception. WebKit (Safari), Gecko (FX), Trident (IE) and Presto (Opera) are just rendering engines, not browsers and coming up with a brand new rendering engine for Chrome would have been foolish to the extreme. It's not the rendering engine that makes the difference, it's the browser that the rendering engine is built into and how that particular browser is built, what functions/features the browser includes and how those functions/features are implemented that make the difference. From what I've read Google picked that engine due to WebKit being light and fast on it's virtual feet.

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  90. My thoughts is the Mozilla Firefox is the first major browser to get steamrolled. Firefox and Chrome behave similarly with both being fast. Firefox is only slowed by the addons people install and Chrome doesn't support plugins yet. But Chrome is a great first attempt and I see them easily beating Opera and Safari to a pulp. Mock cartoons are already on the net of Google's attempts at world domination. I can't wait to be driving a Google car.


  91. You have guts. Imagine if you had the same basic relationships that you now with Google with Microsoft instead – you would be eviscerated and left slowly twisting in the wind…Firefox 3 is excellent – but many employers forbid downloading it at work. good luck.

  92. I think Opera sooner or later will go the way of the dodo, either refocusing entirely on mobile or embedded market or just becoming irrelevant, a niche player (like Access and their Netfront browser).

    In short: I think there isn't room for 4 web browser engines (IE, Gecko, WebKit, and Opera). And no sane web author will bother to check for 4 engines for look/compatibility/features and bugfixes.

    The question I've been asking myself are these:

    #1 Can Mozilla's Gecko ever become size and speed competitive with WebKit ?

    #2 Can Mozilla ever convince (if #1) Google to have them switch from Webkit to Gecko?

    #3 Gecko right now must be #2 in market share. The only way to keep this lead after the assault by Google would be to put Gecko into as MANY mobile devices as you can. This won't happen unless #1 is true

    #4 If #3 doesn't become true (Gecko making a sizeable dent into the mobile space) then sooner or later you will find that WebKit has #2 market share after Microsoft, and Gecko a distant third. At that point… congratulations, you've become Opera.

    #5 so… by following all of the above…

    a) Does it make sense to continue investing in Gecko?
    b) Can't Mozilla integrate all the current features (XUL, plug-ins, extensions) and deliver all that on top of WebKit?
    c) Is there any way webkit and gecko could be integrated to become one? (that's assuming there's anything in Gecko worth integrating into WebKit and that the webkit project managers would accept it).

    In short: I don't think there'a a room for IE, Gecko, and WebKit. I think there's room for two big players in the rendering engine space (I'm not talking browsers, I'm talking about ENGINES), one of those open source (the other will be MSFT with their monopoly for as long as it lasts).

    Would Mozilla lose its mystique by dropping its own rendering engine and being just a framework and apps built around another engine? Is the “engine” (Gecko) the soul of Mozilla? or is Firefox the current soul of Mozilla?

    Thoughts? Comments? Expletives?

  93. Don't knock chrome's “open sourcedness” just because it is developed by google. Most large open source projects have big money behind them. Even firefox has a large chuck of change comming from google itself.

    Open is open. Google is not developing anything specific to make its own web apps work better, more, it is working on making all web apps work better.


  94. Chrome is a term all developers use. It is a window without all the gunk around it essentially. In javascript you could pop one up in most browsers with <script>window.open('admin.aspx', 'chrome', 'menubar=no,
    toolbar=no,scrollbars=no,width=300,height=300,resi zable=no')</script>

  95. With the task manager that comes with chrome, you would be able to keep tabs on whether or not a plug in was comsuming too much in the resource dept. This is a really cool feature and it will show where the bloat blame really should lie.

  96. I tried using Google Chrome and although there was a lot I liked about it, I'm realizing more and more how much of a Firefox person I've become. I like the service Mozilla offers far too much to switch permanently.

  97. I agree with the person above who stated that “Most people use IE” and that they have no idea that one can have the Internet without IE- the two are synonymous. Which is just how MS like it.

    A major part of Google's business is data mining. Targetted ads, adwords etc. How better, then, than to use their own browser to take this to another level. I generally like Google, but all business tends towards monopoly and hence to tyranny, like the “evil empire” of old- MS and Intel. If Chrome or it's descendents become the de facto browser, this surely cannot be good, and if there's one search engine the currently using IE public ARE aware of, it's Google. This puts them in a unique position. Google is now a brand name, too.

    Competition is good, but often bewilders the average user -the vast range of Linux distros and apps that come with it, (several GUIS, for example), are a classic case of bewildering choice versus crap-but-we're-used-to-it IE.

    Having tried Chrome, I can't see anything in it at the moment that would make me ditch FF3- and how many browsers do you need? (Except JS developers, plainly!).

  98. Funny, I was noting just last night how Firefox was handling my 20 tabs (3 of which were flash/java heavy) with only 100 Mb consumption….

  99. I have just gotten Firefox 3 installed and in about five days have had as many as thirty crashes and have been unable to get to my email at Myway.com., I'm thinking of going back to the original Firefox as 3 really sucks.

  100. For any support, questions or themes for Google Chrome, be sure to visit http://chromeguru.info

    ChromeGuru – Unofficial Google Chrome Community & Support Forums.

  101. HI John-

    Thought this would be of interest:



    Dhiren Harchandani

  102. They won't open the sources ever. Why aren't they open yet?

    Keep in mind that google likes to provide closed source applications.

  103. Paranoid: i looks like a Google conspiracy, everybody says “it's open source” or “it's going to be open source” but where to download the sources?
    (double post=my bad)

  104. http://chromeguru.info

    Unofficial Google Chrome Community & Support

    First Google Chrome Dedicated Themebase!

  105. I cannot find any reference to PRICE anywhere on all the information they put out can you educate me about thsi Iam an OAP and cannot afford expensive progammes Saturnally Brian

  106. it's funny, the more i use Chrome (for windows), the more unstable it seems to get… crashes a lot more, can't handle sites with flash, hangs every time i close a tab… all that to say, i'm switching back to Firefox

  107. If Google Chrome delivers on the standards it has so far, then Firefox might just see its end. Already Chrome has many Firefox users changing to it, so once it's fully developed it will take over. Ouch Mozilla!

  108. Is it just me or is it kind of scary when you think about just how much Google wants to know about what you do on the internet. Think about it they know a lot about you.

  109. John, one real edge over Google and others might be to look seriously at the transfer speed of sending files over the internet. A key would be the ability to send, say, a mp3 file over the net with some real speed from site to site. This is an area that is, for now, a third party province. What if Mozilla took on this task and conquered it?

  110. Well I like Google Chrome I have to admit, it is much more faster

  111. I love google chrome

  112. I heard that it is buggy, is that right?

  113. hey, dont repeat Netscape vs IE.. plzz.. i love firefox..

  114. Chrome Is Great Stuff

  115. My gut feeling is that Chrome and Firefox code will merge in the foreseeable future, why not take the best of both worlds? The web is already full of Chromizers for Firefox

  116. I completely disagree. While it will be another year (or so–whenever an extension interface is supported) until I'll completely convert from firefox to chrome. The core ideas inherent in Chrome in terms of making it a more stable, savvy browser crush some of the firefox model. Chrome's sandboxing and re-written javascript-object model make it way more stable than firefox. Perhaps this belief stems from some of the more annoying bugs I've recently discovered in FF3, but I think it runs deeper. Google is not just trying to compete in the web browser marketshare, but with Chrome and Google Gears they are trying to re-invent the idea of what an operating system looks like by allowing their browser to let developers run applications offline. Moreover with the computing cloud become a more dominant component in everyday surfing, having some sort of desktop file system is becoming an old idea, fast.

    It's true that Google becoming a browser monopoly is bad, but we have to remember that google has always offered it's services for FREE to users. The entity makes its profit by ad-sales and by keeping its model free to users to, it keeps more eyes open to ads. Google is making the web more individualized for the surfer, but more open and standardized for the developer, which is exactly firefox's model, but Google is doing so at a much more sophisticated level, in my opinion.

  117. I've seen your post ~30 days ago and it actually inspired me to download chrome. Now, after a month of use I am completely addicted to it and I really have no regrets about leaving mozilla and IE behind. It'd be great if we can see more plugins for Chrome as it seems to be the only thing that is missing right now. Cheers, Jason