Completely Unqualifed Opinion: Google Chrome

My girlfriend and I spent this past weekend in Ann Arbor, Michigan to catch the UM home opener (and loss, unfortunately).  One of her classmates grew up in the area, and her family was incredibly generous in letting us stay with them while we were in town.  Over dinner Friday night my host asked what I do for a living, and as always, as soon as I said “Software Engineer,” he asked asked if I could fix their computers for them.  I don’t begrudge such requests quite like some of my peers do, but in this case I was especially eager to repay my hosts’ hospitality, and quickly agreed.

The family had a desktop computer and a laptop with a whole mess of virus and adware mucking up the works.  The desktop was infected with Antivirus 2009, rendering Internet Explorer completely useless.   I’ve done this enough times to have a fairly set routine:

• Download and install Mozilla Firefox
• Download and run AVG Antivirus (Free version)
• If necessary, download and run Ad-Aware (Free version)

I’ve found that works in plenty of these situations.  After I was finished, I left Firefox behind on the laptop, purely by accident.  Later, the laptop’s owner thanked me for installing it, saying he had heard of Mozilla, but didn’t know how to get it.   Typing “Firefox” into a Google search had honestly never occurred to him.

This experience stayed with me as I read today’s news that Google is launching a new web browser called Chrome.  Ostensibly, this is an attempt to improve the experience of its web-based offerings by taking more control over the desktop environment.  If Google’s offerings can only be used through a browser, then Google naturally has a vested interest in making sure the browser is lean, fast, and stable.  By jumping into competition with Firefox and IE, Google can either a) grow and become a dominant browser or b) push Microsoft and Mozilla to advance their products and see Google’s web products improve from the user’s perspective as a natural by-product.  It would appear that Google is making a move on Microsoft to push the desktop operating system into irrelevance.

TechCrunch certainly seems to think so.  In fact, the author goes so far as to suggest that Google is attempting to supplant Windows itself:

“They’ve built their own Javascript engine [V8] despite the fact that Webkit already has one. This should make Ajax applications like Gmail and Google Docs absolutely roar. When combined with [Google] Gears, which allows for offline access (see what MySpace did with Gears to understand how powerful it is), Chrome is nothing less than a full on desktop operating system that will compete head on with Windows.”

They may be on to something here.  I pulled the latest market share data for browser share:

Browser Market Share: Courtesy of Net Applications

and for operating system share:

Operating System Market Share: Courtesy of Net Applications

Firefox, the fastest growing browser, will soon claim 20% of the browser market.  IE’s market share still tracks pretty closely with the installed user base of Windows, which while declining, is still clearly dominant.

I wonder, however, what piece of this pie Chrome will cut into.  A lot of times unabashed nerds like myself tend to forget that most average people couldn’t care less what web browser they use; they’ll use whatever the computer comes with  (Read Nudge for some sciency explanations why).  My young friend I mentioned earlier is illustrative:  a lot of people don’t know or don’t care to find out how to install new browsers (and other programs for that matter).  Firefox only comes installed by default on a few platforms; for any others a user must explicitly decide to go to Mozilla and download it on their own for Windows, Mac, and more than a few Linux distributions.  So in the browser space, really the piece of the market that’s open to newcomers is the 20% occupied right now by Firefox, Opera, and the rest.  The threat here is that Google could cannibalize the usage volume it gets from its prominent placement in Firefox (the home page and the default search).

If Google’s eye really is on unseating Windows,  releasing a competitor to IE is not going to be enough.  Internet Explorer is still “the Internet” to the vast majority of computer users, and will be until Microsoft’s defaults change or the underlying reality of the operating system market does.  Windows’ market share has been in decline, much to the benefit of consumers, thanks to Apple’s resurgence and increased public awareness of open source products such as Linux.   This has had the dual benefit of improved user experience (and expectations), while forcing operating systems to at least pay lip service to common standards.  In this new competitive landscape, a Linux distribution designed, developed, branded, and supported by Google would be in a far better position to finally knock Windows off its lofty perch.

So where is the Google OS?  Android is only a few months from landing in US consumers’ hands, can a true, ad-supported Windows killer be lurking behind the curtain?  Until then, new browsers won’t change the basic math of the browser competitive landscape, they’ll just duke it out for the leftovers.  I expect to see Firefox and Opera’s numbers decline as Chrome gains market share; there’s nowhere else for Chrome’s users to come from.