Google has just taken one more step in its quest for world domination: now it has its own web browser, named Chrome. According to the Official Google Blog:
We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.
As if it wasn’t enough, they have also published a web comic to help people understand how Chrome works. Cool, huh?
Microsoft probably doesn’t find it all that cool…
Does anyone doubt it that Chrome is a direct attack on Microsoft?
Years after wiping Netscape away from the market, Microsoft sees Internet Explorer’s reign finally being threatened by strong competitors. The first was Firefox, which is still my number one, by the way. Now Google claims a piece of this cake too. And that’s going to be a big one, since they have the best advertising page on the whole Internet: their own main page.
I guess many, many people are going to download Chrome… If those people will all put it to use, like it and stick to it, is another story.
Why does Google need Chrome?
Before Chrome, Google’s business relied for the most part on… Microsoft.
Think about it: no matter how much you like Google, can you access it without a web browser? No, you can’t. And in case you don’t use Internet Explorer, you’re still part of the minority. Most Internet users are faithful to IE, often due to plain laziness — that browser comes with Windows, ready to use, so…
If you were a business owner, would you depend on your main competitor to get clients? Certainly not. Why should Google do it?
What comes next? Google’s Operating System?
Nobody knows for sure, though I wouldn’t be too surprised if I heard about a certain “GooglOS” one of these days.
Anyway, what makes many people worried right now is the possibility that Google will invade Chrome users’ privacy. Matt Cutts has already addressed this concern in a post on his blog. Nonetheless, there are other concerns that are unlikely to be discussed as openly. Google’s increasing dominance, for instance. If Chrome becomes as popular as it can, won’t Google become excessively powerful? After all, Google itself is Chrome’s default search engine (which is only natural).
And what about the other search engines? Won’t they do anything about it? What’s Yahoo! waiting for?
I can’t hardly wait to see how Chrome will impact the whole Internet. More posts will follow as I get more pieces of info to share with you.
Where is your traffic leaking?
We'll pull your data and show you the three biggest opportunities on your site.
