everynerd.net

The release of Google’s Chrome browser sent the blogging world mad, including myself.  And after its release on Tuesday there were at least 3000 new articles and blog posts reviewing and analysing it. Most writers have equally been surprised at the bold movie by Google, who has long supported Firefox and their growing market share of web browsing.

Some of the initial questions after its release were, are they competing with Firefox? Does this end the partnership?

The answer simply, is no, and even though the Mozilla Foundation was surprised by the release (even though they won’t admit it), they don’t feel that Chrome is meant to be an attack against Firefox or a sign of impending doom for the partnership between Google and Mozilla.

Mozilla Europe president, Tristan Nitot, commented in a PC Pro article:

I think Chrome is not aimed at competing with Firefox. Rather it’s made for competing with Internet Explorer.

And the featureset that Chrome has been released with seems to backup this statement. With Internet Explorer 8’s Beta 2 release on August 27th, Microsoft has been hard at work perfect a multi-threaded browser to allow each individual tab run separately away from the main bulk of the application.

Tristan goes on,

We don’t have a strategy which is competing with Google. We’re not offering a search service, we’re not selling advertising, while Microsoft has made a lot of noise that it wanted to go there.

It makes sense that as the web presence of Google grows, so does Microsoft’s desire to chase the revenue that Google is trailblazing.  Mozilla’s always remained a simple, neutral entity directed at improving a user’s web experience, regardless of any other corporate giants vying for their attention.

What’s been made clear is Google is about web applications, and Chrome was designed to improve that relationship with the user, and both Internet Explorer and Firefox have yet to venture into a deeper, more focused browsing experience in that sense.

It’s important to remember that Google knows the Internet. And Chrome is their gateway to building the future the way they see it. And Microsoft will stop at nothing to end the trend-setting whirlwind that they (ironically) invented with the release of Windows 95.

Google has made it clear that they don’t feel the state of browsers on the market is acceptable. Also quoted in a PC Pro article, Eric Tholome, product managing director of applications at Google says:

The pace of development of apps on the internet has outpaced browser development. There’s a lot of frustration out there that we could solve. The only way we could do that is from a fresh start.

And with Google Documents competing directly against Microsoft Office and providing those services as an online resource only, it made sense that in order to further their share of the business they provide they needed a way to better present that and to make it more useful.

So does this mean that the heat’s off Firefox? Not entirely, there are some features of Chrome that will need to be standard on browser (private browsing, threaded tabs) and Firefox will catch up to those, but it’s impossible to release a product like this and expect the other siblings on the market to rub shoulders and play fair. The future of the Mozilla/Google partnership might be friendly, but surely won’t be quiet.

The war against Microsoft however, just got a lot louder. And if anyone in Silicon Valley is reading this, it might be time to hide the chairs again.

* And for anyone still concerned about the Chrome TOS that were blatantly ripped from their other services, it’s been updated:

11. Content license from you
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.