Posts Tagged ‘chrome’

Google Pulls a Microsoft

Several PC vendors have come forth and stated to Google that they want Google’s Chrome to ship pre-insatlled on their PCs. Dell, HP, Acer, and Toshiba have all said they would rather be shipping PCs with Chrome as the default browser rather than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. IE has become the most-used browser on the web consuming about 70% of all users on the web after Microsoft started shipping it with Windows in the mid 90′s as the default browser. Microsoft has been at odds with OEMs over the last couple of years blaming them for the failures of Vista. As Mac sales surge, OEMs have to be looking in other directions for some help in losing the public perception that PCs are less secure and less reliable. The argument really lies in OS X vs. Windows, but both companies have gone by the terms “Mac vs. PCs”. Chrome is expected to be out of beta early next year and Google plans on pushing their product to try to take over IE as the dominant browser. Microsoft has been setting their sites on Google to take down their dominance as in the search market and it seems Google is trying to turn things around on Microsoft. Consumers tend to use the default browser with default settings that ship with the computer. Given that Chrome will come with Google as the default search provider, it will continue to dominate the market as well as hopefully gain a stronghold in the browser market as well.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Nov 22nd, 2008

Chrome: A ‘Web OS’?

With all the hype surround Chrome lately, one thing that people have been saying has really made me laugh. People have been calling Chrome a ‘Web OS’ and a Windows-killer.. Yes, the browser from is going to compete directly with Microsoft Windows. Huh? I also heard rumors that Campbell’s is creating a new line of soups to directly take on grocery store chains across the country. (If you believed that I’ve got some software to sell you. Just hit me up in the comments section. I’m sure there’s others who have things to sell you as well.)

Despite the hype, no, Chrome is not in fact going to kill Windows. I wish it could, but no. Chrome runs on top of Windows. Eventually (hopefully soon) Chrome will be running on top of (not competing with) Linux and Mac as well. Is Chrome a great browser? We’ll see when it’s out of beta. New UI? Yeah, definitely a unique flair. Some new features? A ‘task manager’ of sorts seem s a little out of the reach of a browser, but I see why they are doing it. Each tab a new process a good idea? Absolutely. Faster? Maybe. But completely revolutionizing how users interact with web applications? Absolutely not.

Chrome is still at its core a web browser. At the end of the day it’s just like Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, etc., a platform on which to view web pages. I suppose in some sick, twisted way we maybe could get away with calling it a virtual machine on top of your application stack since it does have its own code to interpret and a pseudo memory manager, but no, not an OS. It’s so far up the stack that it’s almost laughable to even come close to hinting at that. Ted Dziuba did a great job in depicting just how down the stack Chrome needs to come before becoming an OS. I would disagree with Ted on the subject of how fast web apps are coming, but a great analogy.

Be sure to tune in next week to learn how FTP is poised to obsolete email and chat as we know it.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (1) : Sep 8th, 2008

Google Chrome Performance: Real Numbers!

Despite all of the chatter on the web in the last few days about Chrome, there hadn’t really been a lot of hard numbers about the performance of Chrome versus other browsers. We’ve been hearing about how it’s much faster and more efficient, but no one with real tests. The Zimbra team yesterday released an actual test on their blog. Zimbra is a collaboration suite much like Microsoft Exchange that has a fairly heavy Javascript web client which makes it a perfect candidate for running browser Javascript rendering tests. The verdict: while not the fastest, Chrome definitely held its own. Meanwhile, IE8 was left in the dust, despite big talk from Microsoft fans. The was the fastest in a majority of the tests was Safari with Chrome a close second and Firefox in a slightly farther, but still close third. Since both are based upon Webkit, it’s no surprise that Safari and Chrome were close, but the biggest surprise to me came in the performance of IE8. In the majority of the tests, IE8 took twice as long as the other three to render elements. Where are these performance gains Microsoft has promised? If it’s actually improved, I’d like to see tests of the same nature with IE7.

Note: The Zimbra web client has to be modified to not do a browser check when logging in for the tests to work. Jholder gives the solution in post #6 of this thread.

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Filed under News : Comments (1) : Sep 4th, 2008

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