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Google Chrome: Should its rivals be worried?
Best of the browser big boys

By Stephen Shankland

Published: Wednesday 03 September 2008

Google Chrome is a warning shot for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera.

Initially Google's open source browser is not likely to change the market share rankings. According to Net Applications' browser market share statistics for August, Internet Explorer has 72 per cent share, Firefox 20 per cent, Safari six per cent, and Opera one per cent.

But even before Google's browser became available for download, its repercussions were traversing the industry. There are plenty of implications from a company as large as Google that builds a browser tuned to advance the company's agenda of web-based applications.

Here are some possible implications for the four major alternatives to Chrome.

Internet Explorer
IE still claims the dominant share of the browser market, and it still has the hard-to-beat distribution channel of being built into the most widely used operating system.

Firefox has been chipping away at IE's share for years but the dominance has remained fairly secure, and unless Chrome offers revolutionary new abilities, it's not likely to do more than perhaps increase the chipping rate a bit.

Microsoft has lit a fire under its IE team, and given that Google is such a powerful Microsoft rival, that fire is likely to burn all the hotter because of Chrome. The forthcoming Internet Explorer 8, with beta 2 released last week and the final version officially due to ship by the end of January, is a sign of how serious Microsoft is.

According to Dean Hachamovitch, Internet Explorer general manager, Microsoft welcomes the competition: "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."

Firefox
Firefox potentially stands to lose the most from Chrome.

It's the leading alternative to IE and the standard bearer for those who love open-source software and dislike Microsoft.

Mozilla has something for the philosophical purists that Google lacks, though: a measure of independence. "Uniquely in this market, we're a public-benefit, nonprofit group, with no other agenda or profit motive at all," Mozilla chief executive John Lilly said in a blog posting Monday.

Survival is a powerful motive even if profit isn't, though, and the Mozilla Foundation, the parent of the Mozilla relies on Google for tens of millions of dollars each year in exchange for prominent placement of Google in the browser's search. Happily for Mozilla, Google just signed up for three more years of subsidising Mozilla, so Firefox and other foundation activities should be financially sound at least for the time being.

Firefox has built a massive grassroots fan base, though. And even Google, for all its charisma, money and power, will have a hard time replicating that.

Finally, though Chrome at first blush is bad news for Firefox, there's a subtler reality at play: IE is the dominant browser, and the greater the number of credible underdogs that exist, the more that dominance can't be taken for granted. Don't be surprised to hear Mozilla and Google present themselves more as allies than foes.

Safari
Apple has expanded its Safari ambitions from Mac OS X to Windows, most notably by letting the browser hitch a ride along with the iTunes update software. However, Safari has yet to become a force to be reckoned with.

But Safari could benefit indirectly from Chrome: both browsers are based on the open-source WebKit rendering engine.

If Google sponsors aggressive WebKit development - and doesn't end up wrestling with Apple for power over the project - both browsers stand to gain. Google's Android browser for mobile phones, it should be noted, also is based on WebKit.

Opera
Opera has a small share of the browser market, so it's the most likely to drop in position if Google Chrome catches on. It already fights for relevance against the bigger players.

But CEO Jon Tetzchner points out that its share has grown each time a new browser has emerged as a viable competitor to Internet Explorer.

Tetzchner said: "Last year, we had more than 50 per cent growth in our user base. I think we'll do quite well this year as well. It seems every time there's talk of new browsers, that's been a positive thing for us. It has been good there is focus on browser alternatives."