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> Chrome was, in my opinion, an attempt to undermine Microsoft's dominance. It was also a business strategy, since a browser monopoly by MS could be the death t
by hackuser 10y ago
> Chrome was, in my opinion, an attempt to undermine Microsoft's dominance. It was also a business strategy, since a browser monopoly by MS could be the death to www.google.com
Chrome was released in 2008, when Firefox' share was up to 28% [0] and Microsoft's monopoly already was over. IIRC, Google used former (or hired away then current?) Firefox developers.
[0] Per one source I just looked at
- gcp 10y agoGoogle hired away some key developers, yes. Chrome was insurance for Google. Even with IE's monopoly broken, their search engine could become under threat if someone else outbid them for Firefox's default search. With Chrome having significant marketshare, this is no longer a worry. It's worth investigating how much money Google lost because Firefox switched to Yahoo, just in the USA, and even accounting for the people that switched back. The number is astoundingly high.
- pmontra 10y agoIt was insurance also because it let them be sure that Gmail and Docs would keep running and be fast in at least one browser. Remember when Firefox had a slow JS engine and IE was molassa? Microsoft would not go out of their way to make sure that Google could undermine Office, Mozilla maybe would speedup its JS and Apple probably not given its interest in apps.
- flukus 10y agoIf only there was some way they could have contributed to firefox to fix those issues.