3 ms·

I don't like the idea of YAB, yet another browser. It's absolutely necessary that we have competition but it's way too easy to dilute the market. It's like the

by geuis 18y ago

I don't like the idea of YAB, yet another browser. It's absolutely necessary that we have competition but it's way too easy to dilute the market. It's like the problem of too much choice. We all face it. We go to the store and are greeted with 10 slightly different versions of the same product. Mint toothpaste, mint with extra-whitening, mint-flavored baking soda toothpaste. I don't want to buy one that tastes bad. This stuff is going in my mouth 3x a day, after all. So I'm confused and cranky because I just want my normal toothpaste. My brain remembers the box had the certain logo and the certain white swish of box art. Found it! What size, big or small? Done, continue on to shopping decisions I actually want to think about like what's for dinner. These days, the choice of a browser by 90% of people is the same kind of commodity thought given to toothpaste. They know what they're familiar with. They identify it via the shape and color of the icon, and maybe whether it says "internet" or not. We've had to take 4 years to push Firefox to ~20% marketshare. Internet Explorer still has 75% total, with 30% of that being IE6. Safari, Opera, and all other browsers squeeze into the rough remaining 5% of the market. Adding YAB to the party won't serve anything except to dilute the last 5% some more. What we need is not new browsers, OSS or not. We need marketing. Microsoft had easy marketing for IE. An icon on the desktop called "Internet". We need Apple-style ads with Jason Long as Firefox and John Hodgeman as Internet Explored. Boil the message down to the barest essentials of the message and make it as clear to the "other 90%" as the Big Blue E meant "internet".

alaskamiller 18y ago
The browser war was based on distribution, not marketing. Now this will be a war based on money, not distribution. Will Google continue to pay and support Mozilla Foundation? Because once that's gone...
- siong1987 18y ago
  Google just signed a 3 years deal with Mozilla. So, personally, I don't think that Google Chrome would be direct competitor to Firefox. They are in fact in two different market - normal browsing VS web application. Refer: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrative-deal-with-google-for-3-years/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrati... http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/08/26/firefox-summit-reflections/ http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/08/26/firefox-summit-ref...
  - nickb 18y ago
    They're definitely competing but Google knows that browser usage stats don't change overnight so they're just hedging their bets. So it doesn't matter whether Firefox or Chrome wins, Google wins in the end.
  - fauigerzigerk 18y ago
    So firefox (or IE or Safari or Opera) doesn't compete in the market for running web applications? That's news to me.
- geuis 18y ago
  Distribution was the marketing. The big blue e was all the marketing/branding they needed. Most users associate the Internet with that damn icon.
  - alaskamiller 18y ago
    I meant distribution as in partnering with AOL to use IE, leveraging Windows monopoly consumer side and enterprise side, and arguing with the DoJ on software tying. In terms of marketing, Microsoft did very little compared to Mozilla.
- netcan 18y ago
  That is an interesting question. (An is it evil question ). I guess it comes down to what they are trying to achieve with the browser in the first place. Is it improving the web experience or creating a dominant browser? I think it's likely that the latter will creep in once they're at it for a few years. But for now the first seems to be a pretty important goal. For now, Firefox is a pretty important way to further that goal. And for now, Google seems happy enough to sink some cash into that goal. $15m-$20m p/y is probably a reasonable sum (compare to other expenses in this area) as long as A: Firefox significantly improves the web for users & B: That is a Google goal that they're willing to pay for. It's not charity either. What's default search worth on the open market? Probably something.
unalone 18y ago
I think you underestimate Google's ability to push their goods. They've shown time and time again that they can enter a cluttered market and make a name for themselves nonetheless. You seem to assume that the average person isn't going to want this rather than Firefox. That's patently false. I dislike Gecko: in my experience WebKit works better and faster. I dislike Mozilla: they seem to me to be manned with incompetent workers who are each brilliant at one small thing, poor with everything else. Above all, I dislike Firefox. I think it's extremely ugly to look at. I've had more crashes with that in Windows than I've had with Safari, and Safari on Windows isn't nearly as stable as it is on OS X. Its developers focus too much on hype and not enough on reliability and ease of use. They're arrogant about it, too. So if Google makes a web browser similar to how they made their chat client, they'll find a market. All they need is something simple, uncluttered, fast, and efficient - and that's what they're offering up here. They don't list one feature here that I don't think is essential, and they don't miss more than one or two features that I wish they had. I think that, in terms of browser design, we've just seen Google announce that there's finally a competitor to Apple's browser. And the thing is, there are a lot of people who dislike Firefox but use it for plugins. If a browser appears that's better-designed AND open, Firefox is going to get hurt. Also, how do you think Firefox got 20%? Google. Google Google Google. And I'm certain that they can push Chrome much faster if and when they want to. The solution isn't advertising. The solution is figuring out just how to make a browser that users will actively seek out. Firefox was like that for a while, before other browsers got tabs. Beyond that, though, it's never had anything that new users really care much about, with the slim exception of the tech market. Most Firefox users can't tell the difference between it and IE without a hacker friend pointing it out. And I think Google is aware of that.
- qaexl 18y ago
  With the feature set of WebKit + Gears + faster Javascript, as a developer, I'm much more likely to write apps against this platform. I am thinking specifically of distributing the Chrome browser with my app: User goes to the site and already has Chrome. My site automatically detects that, and they can download my Gears app. User goes to the site and has Firefox. My site detects that and gives them an option of the "lite" and the "full" version of my Gears app. The "full" version just happens to come with an install of the Chrome. User goes to the site and has IE. My site detects that and gives them the download link to my app that comes with a Chrome installer. In all three cases, I get what I want -- users use my app, and preferably running on a platform that runs fast enough. If I'm targeting "mom and pop", I doubt they'd notice that it happens to come with Chrome. Because I can write a Gears app that doesn't have the URL links or the menu links, as far as the user is concerned, they are simply running my app. I can easily see Google pushing an "office suite", which simply consists of a gears version of Gmail, GDoc, etc. Personally, I liked Firefox 1 and 1.5. I thought Firefox 2 was horrible, and all the IEs worse. When Firefox 3 release candidates came out, I switched to it immediately. Reading through those feature lists, as soon as Chrome is available for Linux, I'm getting a copy of it. Maybe I won't have to keep disabling Javascript by default with Chrome.

by geuis 18y ago

alaskamiller 18y ago

The browser war was based on distribution, not marketing. Now this will be a war based on money, not distribution. Will Google continue to pay and support Mozilla Foundation? Because once that's gone...

siong1987 18y ago
Google just signed a 3 years deal with Mozilla. So, personally, I don't think that Google Chrome would be direct competitor to Firefox. They are in fact in two different market - normal browsing VS web application. Refer: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrative-deal-with-google-for-3-years/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrati... http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/08/26/firefox-summit-reflections/ http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/08/26/firefox-summit-ref...
- nickb 18y ago
  They're definitely competing but Google knows that browser usage stats don't change overnight so they're just hedging their bets. So it doesn't matter whether Firefox or Chrome wins, Google wins in the end.
- fauigerzigerk 18y ago
  So firefox (or IE or Safari or Opera) doesn't compete in the market for running web applications? That's news to me.
geuis 18y ago
Distribution was the marketing. The big blue e was all the marketing/branding they needed. Most users associate the Internet with that damn icon.
- alaskamiller 18y ago
  I meant distribution as in partnering with AOL to use IE, leveraging Windows monopoly consumer side and enterprise side, and arguing with the DoJ on software tying. In terms of marketing, Microsoft did very little compared to Mozilla.
netcan 18y ago
That is an interesting question. (An is it evil question ). I guess it comes down to what they are trying to achieve with the browser in the first place. Is it improving the web experience or creating a dominant browser? I think it's likely that the latter will creep in once they're at it for a few years. But for now the first seems to be a pretty important goal. For now, Firefox is a pretty important way to further that goal. And for now, Google seems happy enough to sink some cash into that goal. $15m-$20m p/y is probably a reasonable sum (compare to other expenses in this area) as long as A: Firefox significantly improves the web for users & B: That is a Google goal that they're willing to pay for. It's not charity either. What's default search worth on the open market? Probably something.

unalone 18y ago

I think you underestimate Google's ability to push their goods. They've shown time and time again that they can enter a cluttered market and make a name for themselves nonetheless. You seem to assume that the average person isn't going to want this rather than Firefox. That's patently false. I dislike Gecko: in my experience WebKit works better and faster. I dislike Mozilla: they seem to me to be manned with incompetent workers who are each brilliant at one small thing, poor with everything else. Above all, I dislike Firefox. I think it's extremely ugly to look at. I've had more crashes with that in Windows than I've had with Safari, and Safari on Windows isn't nearly as stable as it is on OS X. Its developers focus too much on hype and not enough on reliability and ease of use. They're arrogant about it, too. So if Google makes a web browser similar to how they made their chat client, they'll find a market. All they need is something simple, uncluttered, fast, and efficient - and that's what they're offering up here. They don't list one feature here that I don't think is essential, and they don't miss more than one or two features that I wish they had. I think that, in terms of browser design, we've just seen Google announce that there's finally a competitor to Apple's browser. And the thing is, there are a lot of people who dislike Firefox but use it for plugins. If a browser appears that's better-designed AND open, Firefox is going to get hurt. Also, how do you think Firefox got 20%? Google. Google Google Google. And I'm certain that they can push Chrome much faster if and when they want to. The solution isn't advertising. The solution is figuring out just how to make a browser that users will actively seek out. Firefox was like that for a while, before other browsers got tabs. Beyond that, though, it's never had anything that new users really care much about, with the slim exception of the tech market. Most Firefox users can't tell the difference between it and IE without a hacker friend pointing it out. And I think Google is aware of that.

qaexl 18y ago
With the feature set of WebKit + Gears + faster Javascript, as a developer, I'm much more likely to write apps against this platform. I am thinking specifically of distributing the Chrome browser with my app: User goes to the site and already has Chrome. My site automatically detects that, and they can download my Gears app. User goes to the site and has Firefox. My site detects that and gives them an option of the "lite" and the "full" version of my Gears app. The "full" version just happens to come with an install of the Chrome. User goes to the site and has IE. My site detects that and gives them the download link to my app that comes with a Chrome installer. In all three cases, I get what I want -- users use my app, and preferably running on a platform that runs fast enough. If I'm targeting "mom and pop", I doubt they'd notice that it happens to come with Chrome. Because I can write a Gears app that doesn't have the URL links or the menu links, as far as the user is concerned, they are simply running my app. I can easily see Google pushing an "office suite", which simply consists of a gears version of Gmail, GDoc, etc. Personally, I liked Firefox 1 and 1.5. I thought Firefox 2 was horrible, and all the IEs worse. When Firefox 3 release candidates came out, I switched to it immediately. Reading through those feature lists, as soon as Chrome is available for Linux, I'm getting a copy of it. Maybe I won't have to keep disabling Javascript by default with Chrome.