Digital Marketing and Technological Insight

Google officially launched their new open source web browser, Google Chrome, today. A “Chrome Announcement” webcast took place at 2pm EST to announce the new entry into the browser wars, however, an online comic book meant to introduce the new product accidentally went live yesterday making today’s announcement a bit less dramatic.

So what is Google Chrome? Chrome is built in the open source model ( based on the WebKit engine) and focuses on a simplistic user-interface (sound familiar?). Basically it is a stripped down browser that focuses on the “tab” functionality already seen in Internet Explorer and FireFox. However, even though I don’t view Chrome as ground breaking it does have some interesting features (most of which can be found on either IE or FireFox). The most significant feature is how each tab operates independently - meaning that if one tab crashes it does not take the whole browser with it, this feature also enhances browser security. Chrome also combines the browser address bar with the search box, calling it the “OmniBox”, where a user can both type in a URL and conduct a web search.  Thankfully since Chrome operates off a standard platform web developers wont have to worry about optimizing their websites specifically for Chrome. You can find out more about Google Chrome’s features on their official blog.

Why Google Chrome? According to Google “All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. 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.” According to me this is just another way for Google to control the web users experience, maintain market share and eventually monetize through the integration of Google products (e.g. AdWords, Youtube, etc). Google Chrome launches in 43 languages and in over 122 countries - however, it is only available for windows based computers for now.

So my take? Because it is Google they will grab a small percentage of the browser market share. But what real reason is their to use it? Yes, the “OmniBox” is cool and I love how each tab operates independently, but in the end how is it better than FireFox? It might be a better browser, especially when it comes to the monstrosity that is Internet Explorer, but what reason would all those non-tech savvy web users, who are happy with their IE version whatever,  have to change? None. What I do want to see is Google Chrome for mobile devices - this is an obvious next step for Google and where they gain some serious traction.

• Video of Marissa Mayer discussing Chrome, Google’s new web browser
• Google Chrome Commercial Airs, will anyone care?
• Microsoft is bringing Office to the browser
• Apple’s Safari Browser - Now for Windows