SpringfieldNewsSun.com

Google browser a challenge to Microsoft's software

Google Inc. executives say the new Web browser they released Tuesday is built for the modern-day Internet — optimized for video and online applications, as well as for speed and simplicity.

But the browser called Chrome is also built for something else: the ongoing move away from a computing world based on locally installed software like Microsoft Corp.'s, and towards one based on Web applications like Google's.

"This is potentially a huge step ... in the continuation of what has been the threat to Microsoft from Google all along," said Matt Rosoff, lead analyst at Directions on Microsoft, a research firm that follows the software giant closely. "Instead of using Windows and buying desktop software, users will be free to choose whatever applications they want and access it all through a Web browser."

Microsoft's Internet Explorer is currently the most widely used Web browser in the world, with about 72 percent of the market, according to figures from research group Net Applications. Microsoft just released a trial version of Internet Explorer 8, its latest version.

But other browsers, led by Mozilla's Firefox, have been coming on strong in recent years, helped in part by security problems and other issues with Internet Explorer. Mozilla's open-source Firefox browser — which Google supports financially — is now No. 2, with about 20 percent of the market, according to Net Applications. Apple's Safari has about 7 percent of the market.

Unlike Mozilla and Apple, Google has plenty of cash and clout with Windows-based PC makers that could help it expand Chrome quickly, Rosoff said.

With its own browser, Google also can better push its other Web-based applications — many of which are direct competitors with Microsoft products, such as its word processing, calendar and mapping programs — as well as its online advertisements and market-leading search engine.

Google was expecting tens of thousands of users to download the first version of Chrome after it making it available for free on its Web site Tuesday afternoon.

"This is just step one," Google co-founder Sergey Brin said at a news conference broadcast on the Internet from the company's Mountain View, Calif. headquarters.

The general manager of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Dean Hachamovitch, acknowledged the new competition from Google in a statement but downplayed its significance.

"The browser landscape is highly competitive, but people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips, respects their personal choices about how they want to browse and, more than any other browsing technology, puts them in control of their personal data online," he said.

Google's new browser reflects the company's trademark simplicity, with straightforward tabs on the top, an uncluttered screen, and no dialog boxes that pop up and prompt users to do something when surfing the Web.

The name "Chrome," in fact, is a play on Web-designer parlance for the frames and other accouterments that typically surround a Web page, explained Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president of product management. Despite its name, Chrome is designed with content, not aesthetics, in mind, he said.

Like Internet Explorer 8, Google Chrome also comes with a privacy "stealth" mode — Google calls it "Incognito" — that can automatically conceal the sites users visit. The browser also has features such as instant name recognition that takes a user to frequently visited Web sites with just a few keystrokes. Like Firefox, but unlike Internet Explorer, Chrome is based on an "open source" platform — meaning outside developers are free to build upon it and make improvements.

Perhaps most important, Google executives claim, Chrome is simply faster, more secure and better tuned for today's Internet than anything else on the market.

To illustrate how much the Web has changed, Pichai showed off a text-only Amazon.com Web site from 1995 using an early browser from Netscape next to a page featuring maps and photographs from Google Maps.

"People are doing a lot more online — this is obvious," he said. "What's less obvious is that the underlying browser architecture (today) is very similar to the original Netscape browser."

While Pichai acknowledged there have been tremendous advances in browsers since the 1990s, he said, "We believe browsers should evolve a lot more to keep pace" with today's Internet.

Google got the idea to build its own browser two years ago from hearing the rampant speculation among technology pundits that it would someday do so, Brin acknowledged Tuesday.

"We started hearing about and reading all those contemplated thoughts ,and we said, 'Oh, that kind of makes sense,' " he said. His and other top Google executives' personal frustration with other Web browsers also played a role, Brin said.

Google engineers have been quietly working on the project since then. Over the weekend, the company inadvertently released online a comic book describing Chrome for the first time to the public.

Emphasizing how important the browser is to Google's future, both of the company's co-founders were heavily involved in its development.

Larry Page, who started Google with Brin in 1998, said he has been testing Chrome since its earliest version two years ago. He purposely used an old, outdated computer, and gave feedback to engineers whenever he had problems.

"It really forced them to make it fast and (reliable), even without a lot of memory on a slow computer," Page said.

Bob Keefe covers technology for Cox Newspapers.