The world wide web

The second browser war

Google’s new web browser is its most direct attack on Microsoft yet

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Readers' comments



to: biffaBacon"Can someone explain to me how a new browser is akin to a new operating system, given that Chrome doesn't ACTUALLY work on ALL operating systems yet (Mac and Linux to come)."It's just an analogy. If you build the app to run in the browser (gmail, gdocs), then it doesn't matter what operating system you are on as long as the browser is available to you.

Steven Bennett

What's baffling to me is that Firefox and now Chrome get all the hype, with IE getting obligatory coverage, while all being very unimpressive in the innovation department. iRider and Opera, with far more interesting and inventive features, rarely get any attention, except among some power users.


"Cheeky" is a fair and accurate description of the comic :)

I am an IT geek for a consulting firm, and I predict we will be recommending this to our 2000 users in the very near future.


I've installed Chrome and I found it in the genuine streamline of Google's developers: very easy to use, clever and fast. I strongly recommend to install it.

AB ve

The war will be a Three way fight.Though the article (and all comments)focus on Google Vs MS, I think it will be the 'guys across the street from Google', i.e. Firefox, that will give the first response to Chrome.Chrome will first take market share from IE, and it will be a while before Firefox users switch to Chrome. Expect the three to battle for market share in the next few years and expect more frequent upgrades from all three.

The Crunge

I downloaded Chrome last night, installed it, automatically transfered my links fron IE, and within 2 minutes I was surfing the net.
Within a half hour I discovered that MS had the beta of their ver 8 IE available. I downloaded it, installed it, had to answer a bunch of anoying questions, had to reboot the computer, ran it and it crashed. Still does not load my homepage (Google) when I run it, even though it is supposed to, and even though it does when I open a new tab.

'nuff said.


Nice browser Chrome.I'd hate to be one of those people that jumps full force onto this speeding bandwagon. It just came out yesterday and everyone is hailing the new messiah. Here's a great slogan for Google:Chrome: The Obama of Web Browsers!


I'm amazed. Way faster and as usual with Google, user friendly.My browsers top (before Chrome)1. I.E2. Safari3. FirefoxNew Top1. Chrome2. I.E3. Safari


@SpasticDravidian: You make an excellent point. The natural counter is that there are millions of users who simply don't understand such issues and/or who don't pay attention to the full range of their options, especially to those which are not part of the basic package. Google can make lots of money from those ignorant and/or lazy people.

Adlai W. Stevenson

I left out the ultimate irony: one of the people responsible for the failure of client-side Java, which underpinned the first attempt at browser/cloud computing, was a man who used to work for Sun Microsystems: Eric Schmidt, who is now CEO of Google.

Adlai W. Stevenson

It's funny that the article mentions Netscape but doesn't note all the eerie parallels between Google today and Netscape of yore.

Like Google, Netscape was the darling of high tech, with a high-flying valuation and celebrity management, and it was seen as a serious Microsoft rival that was going to relegate Windows to being a "poorly debugged device driver," as applications moved to the browser and the cloud. Microsoft was terrified of them too, though it shouldn't have been. Like Google, Netscape was also renowned for arrogance, organizational chaos, sloppy work, and a tendency not to finish things they started.

Is it different this time? The "cloud" is more of a reality, but Google's work on Android and other things doesn't show much of a talent for creating platforms. Its own cloud-based apps are a mixed bag indeed, and the only one that's popular, GMail, has suffered a series of recent outages that have reminded people of one of the pitfalls of cloud-based computing. (And Google's memo of "apology" for the outages became an instant classic in the annals of Google arrogance).

What's especially funny is that one goal of Google's browser is to make a more robust platform for executing Javascript, the language that browsers use to run the client side of "cloud" applications. Of course this would be unnecessary if the first platform for browser/cloud apps, based on Java, had actually worked. Of course it didn't quite, and everyone's trying again, with Balkanizing effect: Google with Chrome (Bosnia), Adobe with Flash/Flex/AIR (Croatia), and Microsoft with Silverlight (Serbia). That all these platforms are inferior to what ought to have been achieved with Java is a real tragedy.


downloaded it. looks cool.. and posted this comment using chrome. I foresee a future where there are only 2 browsers, firefox and chrome.


Also, seems strange that there are no Linux and Mac versions of Chrome so far. If its so platform independent, one would think these versions would be built and tested in parallel.


wayne -- I think privacy fears are overblown when the data is used anonymously. Not to mention, Chrome is opensource, so if there were anything shady in it, I assume some programmer out there would out Google.Given the way Google has worked in the past, I wouldn't be surprised if Chrome had the option to turn off such snooping. Think about this, if Chrome is opensource, and such snooping was NOT toggleable, someone would just take the Chrome source code, remove the snooping aspect, and redistribute to the new "privacy" version of Chrome.Big Brother type fears seem applicable if the datamining is not transparent. If we know what is going on, and we have the option to opt out, there isn't really an issue it seems to me. But this is just my opinion, I have not really thought very deeply about the issue. What do other people think?


It is funny. I installed Chrome and tried accessing Economist now.But I got the message that "the economist page has become non responsive. You can wait for them to become responsive or kill them". I had to open the economist website on firefox and read this article.From your article, it looks like google is trying to wait for IE to change or is ready to kill it. Whatever the outcome, it is good news for users like us.Meanwhile, can google note this bug in their Chrome?



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