Lessons From the Web

The Impact of Chrome

Posted in Business, Development, google by admin on the November 24th, 2008

In the days before Chrome there were two main contenders in the browser wars - Internet Explorer and Firefox. With its release in 2004, Firefox proved that ever monopolising Microsoft could be taken on at their own game and has been chipping away at IE’s market share ever since.

This seems set to change with the release of Google Chrome.

There are now two contenders ready to take on Microsoft and both have an extremely good product with which to achieve it. But what does the release of Chrome mean to the browser world?

Firefox

Its latest version, Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2 (code name ‘Shiretoko’), has recently been released to developers and boasts new additions such as the ability to drag and drop tabs between browsers windows, giving the user a much more controlled experience whilst searching the web. Firefox are aiming to make the first beta version available at the end of October and so far it does not seem that Chrome’s release will have affected it too much;

TechCrunch have provided some useful statistics on their readers browser usage as can be seen from Image One and Two.

Image One - 2nd September 2008

Image Two - 4th September 2008

(Both graphs taken from TechCrunch on the 09/09/2008)

What is interesting to see is that the number of Firefox users were not affected over the time period that Google Chrome was released, however this could be due to the fact that Firefox timed the release of Alpha 2 to correspond closely with the release of Chrome.

Internet Explorer

The latest version of Internet Explorer, Version 8, saw the launch of its second public beta in August 08 with improvements being made to security, ease of use RSS integration, CSS compatibility and embedded Ajax support.

As the TechCrunch stats show, IE usage took a hit from the introduction of Chrome. 30.7% to 23.9% is a drop that can’t be ignored, even if the stats refer to a heavily tech based audience.

On the other hand, as Harry McCracken (from PC Advisor) points out, perhaps Microsoft should be more concerned with the impact that Chrome could have on Windows rather than Internet Explorer. As it stands, IE is free to download and comes as standard on most computers, world wide. Contrasting to this is the big revenue earner, Windows, which brings in millions each year for Microsoft and has already been ‘threatened’ by Google with the release of Chrome.

More critically McCracken considers that maybe the world should be wary of yet another Google product “that didn’t change anything at all” and wait to see what happens once all the hype has calmed down. If Chrome can achieve anywhere near the market share that FireFox enjoys then we could be looking at a scenario where IE no longer holds an outright majority, a situation not seen since the lofty days of Netscape vs. IE.

So, what does the future hold for web browsers?

It is fact that the introduction of Google Chrome has changed the browser landscape, but time will tell whether its impact is in direct market share or simply to raise the bar for all concerned.

  • Will Google continue to fund Firefox as promised?
  • Will non technical users move away from IE, or will the move be limited to the techIEs amongst us?
  • Can Google maximize the value of google.com as a platform to push Chrome, if indeed they want to at all?
  • Will the “minor players” such as Opera still be in business in a year to come?

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