Google Chrome - A New Web Browser

This morning I got the news of launch of a new web browser "Chrome" from Google in its official blog. Since then I have been frantically trying to download the software. I could finally do it at 12 at midnight. I am a huge fan of Google. It is one company that seems to do everything right in this Internet era. Being a leader in Web applications, it was only time before it moved into the platform where they are run i.e. the web browser.

User experience

What I like about all Google products is their simplicity. They have done away with Menu Bar, Tab Bar, Search Bar and a bar at bottom that exists in Firefox. This gives them additional vertical space equivalent to 3 bars to display webpage. Chrome has also done well in being a very fast software. It responds to events faster than other browsers I have used. Perform actions like page scroll, opening and closing tabs, typing text and so on, one will realise how fast it is. Javascripts are made to run the fastest. Sridhar Vembu of Zoho.com lauds this fact in his blog. All this doesnot come free, it uses more resources to do it. Opening each tab spawns a new process. Creating separate process has a advantage. Suppose opening a webpage fails and hangs the software, only the tab that opened the webpage is affected. Not others as in Firefox because it opens all tabs under same process. It is not common to find a webpage hanging the browser, open any unproffesionally written Indian website.

Browser's Growing Importance

After booting the OS, the browser is the first software that I run on my computer. Cloud Computing has enabled all computations and storage online i.e. at server end. Be it Office Application, Email, Music, Video, Photos, Games, etc. No hassles of maintaining files on local computer, updating and maitaining large resource intensive softwares. Anything can be accessed from anywhere. All they need is a web browser and internet connection. A thin client or dumb terminal can replace our sophisticated PC. With this web browser has become the most important software. That's why we are seeing a major browser war today.

Competetive Landscape

Source - Net Applications

Internet Explorer - Microsoft just launched IE 8. IE will continue to exist and be a leader for another 5 years atleast. The users of IE are Windows users who are not aware of Firefox and use it because it came by default with their PC. They don't realise that there are faster alternatives, don't understand that a poor browser can be a security loop hole, are not interested in trying something different.

Mozilla Firefox - Mozilla is adding almost 1% to its market share every month. The firefox 3 launch was spectacular with 8 million downloads spending hardly any advertising money. It earns money from Google itself by placing google as default search engine in its search bar. But remember Mozilla is a Free Software Foundation and is not dependent on Google's money for its survival. Mozilla has its strength in its developer network, the vast reach it already has, 3000+ free addons.

Google Chrome - Google has made it open source, in the same lines of Firefox, used the modules from firefox itself. Google's contract with Mozilla extends for another 3 years. I hope they work together to create 2 complementary browsers to give a good choice to the users. Any internet user in this world uses google.com or yahoo.com. Given its reach and brand image it is easy for Google to promote Chrome to its users. Simple value proposition could be "Use Chrome to work with our applications better".

With the launch of Chrome, I think Chrome will grow at the cost of Firefox. Because to use Firefox or Chrome, the user needs to take extra effort to download and use them. Both of them are similar. Here the user now has a choice between Firefox and Chrome while earlier it was only Firefox. But together they will fight IE.