Hype and naysayers aside, Google Chrome (download here) has been able to obtain over 1% of the market share for web browsers in only one day after launching. While the browser itself is very fast and it offers some great benefits, it does have it’s share of problems too. Most notably, its bugs, security issues, inability to run/display certain things, tendency to crash, and it’s contrversial EULA. We have to remember however that it is in its infancy and issues like these should be expected during this early stage.
While the buzz seems to be that Firefox is Chrome’s main competitor, that’s very doubtful. Yes, StatCounter has indicated their stats show that the major market share growth for Chrome is via an adoption/stealing of Firefox users. However, we have to remember that Firefox users are mostly early adopters and developers that will be testing out Chrome and will not be long time users. Moreover Firefox users love their Add-ons and will not convert until Chrome’s own apps / extensions rival that of Firefox and that is at least a year or two away. Thus it’s most likely that market share growth for Chrome with come from stealing Internet Explorer users. It’s a very interesting competition with Microsoft holding the majority market share for web browsers and Google possessing its stronghold on search. We’ll just have to see how hard Google pushes Chrome and how easy they make for IE users to make the conversion.
So here are the reasons why Google will most likely succeed in this endeavor. The list is not in any order of importance and is definitely not comprehensive at all. Feel free to point out any other considerations for the basis of success or failure of Chrome in your comments.
Reasons Why Chrome Should Become Top Web Browser:
- Chrome is being promoted on Google’s homepage; one of the most popular sites in the world
- Chrome will be the default browser on Android, Google’s software platform / operating system for mobile devices
- Chrome is very fast
- Much of Chrome is open source (based on WebKit, powered by Google Gears)
- It bridges the desktop to web gap (via Google Gears) enabling offline access and more powerful web applications
- It’s already integrated some of the best features of other popular browsers; Opera’s Speed Dial default start page, Safari’s and IE 8’s private browsing abilities (Chrome calls it Incognito), and Firefox 3’s smart address bar a.k.a. Awesome Bar (Chrome’s Omnibox)
- Google will create an app / extension platform that will extend the usability of Chrome allowing similar to that of iPhone apps and Firefox Add-ons
- Chrome will be supported on multiple operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux) allowing Google to steal market share for browsers ran off Windows (IE, Firefox, Flock, Opera), Mac (Safari) and Linux (Konqueror)
- Google’s popular services (search, Apps, Maps, AdSense, AdWords, Gmail, Calendar, Blogger, etc.) provide great leverage for the adoption of Chrome
- Google has plenty of browser based experience; Google employees worked on Firefox and hired a Firefox lead engineer to help develop Chrome
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Only time will tell.
For the moment Chrome does not come with enough features for the regular user. A thing it does differently is separate Windows processes for each tab, but I don’t know how many people care about such technical details.
Kevin reply on September 19th, 2008 9:37 pm:
I am not sure how much I really care about that either. If it will ensure stability and speed browser/page loading I’m all for it. The biggest draw for me would be the speed at this point. Until they offer the add-ons/extensions ability I have no reason to leave Firefox. I am also a big user of RoboForm so it too will need to work in Chrome for me to make the switch.
I hesitate to use even upgraded versions of Chrome, since my last experience using it (first version) left my computer compromised; have they fixed the security issues beyond all doubt?
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