[CoLoCo] Google Chrome

Tue Sep 9 16:36:04 BST 2008

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/057ea574-7a04-11dd-bb93-000077b07658,dwp_uuid=921ce734-79a5-11dd-bb93-000077b07658.html

Google sees new browser as defensive move

By Chrystia Freeland in St Paul and Richard Waters in San Francisco

Published: September 3 2008 23:36 | Last updated: September 3 2008 23:36

*Google <http://markets.ft.com/tearsheets/performance.asp?s=us:GOOG>*launched
its web browser in part to stop its rival,
*Microsoft <http://markets.ft.com/tearsheets/performance.asp?s=us:MSFT>*,
from "Balkanising" the internet by carving it up in ways that favoured its
own services, the internet company's chief executive officer said on
Wednesday.

Speaking in a video interview with the Financial Times at the Republican
national convention <http://www.ft.com/indepth/uselections2008> in St Paul,
Eric Schmidt said Google's Chrome browser had been built mainly to create a
more secure and stable platform for internet users.

However, he also conceded that "there is a defensive component" to the
decision as Google tries to prevent Microsoft from using its dominant
Internet Explorer browser to outflank it.

"Microsoft has a history of favouring its own applications and I can give
you 500,000 pages of court testimony, document web blogs and so forth and so
on about that," he said.

Invoking the internet's most famous competitive battle – Microsoft's defeat
of browser-maker Netscape that led to a US antitrust investigation – Mr
Schmidt added: "We think that the browser continues to be an important
platform; that the browser wars of 10 years ago were right: the browser
matters."

The launch of Chrome this week, though rumoured for the two years it had
been under development, marked an abrupt change of course from Google's
earlier position and highlighted the high stakes of this latest version of
the browser wars.

"It is true that we actually, and I in particular, have said for a long time
that we should not do a browser because it wasn't necessary," Mr Schmidt
said.

"The thing that changed in the past couple of years . . . is that people
started building powerful applications on top of browsers and the browsers
that were out there, in particular in Explorer, were not up to the task of
running complex applications."

Mr Schmidt hinted at Google's long-term aims of challenging Microsoft's
dominant position in corporate software, saying Chrome would be a platform
for "powerful industrial apps".

"There is an opportunity for a platform and that platform for running these
new applications is something that you can't really do on IE7, and that's
the argument," said Mr Schmidt.

Mr Schmidt added that Chrome, as an open-source piece of software, could not
be used to direct browser traffic to Google's own internet services.

Copyright <http://www.ft.com/servicestools/help/copyright> The Financial
Times Limited 2008

On Sat, Sep 6, 2008 at 1:31 PM, Bob Acker <ackerrj at gmail.com> wrote:

> This will be a platform for Google Apps.
>
> IMHO it is strategic and necessary for Google to own its own cross o/s
> platform.
>
> As Google Apps increasingly begin to suck away at MS revenue stream, MS
> will attempt to kill them as it has done in the past to others.
>
> With their own platform, this should be easier to prevent.
>
> That it is open source is a great plus.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 6, 2008 at 1:11 PM, Andrew <keen101 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I think it's good to have more choices, it will foster creativity. And
>> since it's open source it will probably eventually help everyone (if it has
>> anything unique). I probably won't use it, but it's a neat idea.
>>
>> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26519075
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 6, 2008 at 12:57 PM, W S <ws3reg at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Does anyone else see the folly of building Google up into the Wal-Mart
>>> of the internet?
>>>
>>> I don't know, if it doesn't have Adblock and Noscript, it's a
>>> non-starter for me.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Sep 1, 2008 at 3:16 PM, Michael TheZorch Haney
>>> <thezorch at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> > Their working on their own web browser completely from scratch, and its
>>> > open source.  There is some promising stuff seen in this article on
>>> what
>>> > exactly this new browser can do.  They've also built a new Javascript
>>> > engine from scratch using the open source Java code.  Though there's no
>>> > mention of it here a Google search has found references to this being
>>> > ported to all operating systems; ie, Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and
>>> > possibly Android (Google's Linux OS for cellphones).
>>> >
>>> > http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10029914-2.html
>>> >
>>> > --
>>> > Michael "TheZorch" Haney
>>> > thezorch at gmail.com
>>> > http://thezorch.googlepages.com/home
>>> > SypeName: thezorch
>>> > AIM: thezorch at gmail.com
>>> > Yahoo IM: zorchhaney
>>> > ICQ: 343230252
>>> > GoogleTalk: thezorch
>>> > MSN Messeger: haneymichael at hotmail.com
>>> > Free You Computer from the Tyranny of Microsoft www.ubuntu.com
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > --
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
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