Google goes beyond the browser wars
Posted
Sep 02 2008, 12:50 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Google's coming out with a browser today, and that has people fired up about a new browser war. But I think this goes beyond the browser wars of years past. What we're seeing is the next stage of the already raging battle between the browser and the operating system.
Yes, Google is going after Microsoft where it hurts, but I don't mean Internet Explorer. I'm talking Windows, Microsoft's bread and butter.
The gist of Google's announcement is that, when you get into the nuts and bolts of it, today's browsers aren't sophisticated enough to support the increasingly complex Web applications of today. And those Web applications? That's Google's future.
Google needs to make it easier to access and use those applications. It wants a customized way of serving them up to people. So it's creating its own platform for managing and delivering applications.
Hmmm. Sounds a lot like an operating system, doesn't it?
Google's making its browser act more like an operating system, which chips away at the need for a "real" operating system. In Google's ideal world, you'll be able to access and perfectly run all its applications from anywhere, be it a cell phone, a Mac, a Windows PC, a Linux PC or something else.
The machine you're using won't matter. And that's when the operating system loses the war.
So yeah, there is a war on. But it's not between browsers.
Microsoft investors aren't too worried today. Shares are unchanged at $27.29. And Google shares are up less than 1% to $467.18.
When Google's browser goes live today, you can see it by clicking here.
For another perspective, read my colleague Andrew Horowitz' analysis of Google Chrome and what it means.
Here's what others are saying about the news:
Update: The WSJ's Walt Mossberg takes the browser for a spin and calls it smart, innovative, and rough around the edges. "With the emergence of Chrome, consumers have a new and innovative browser choice," he writes, "and with IE8, the new browser war is sure to be a worthy contest."
Hank Williams notes that Internet Explorer 6, which launched in 2001, still has a 25% market share. That browser is so bad "it is just barely capable of delivering modern experiences," Williams writes. Google Chrome, he adds, is "little more than pissing in the wind."
Nicholas Carr says Google's real goal is to upgrade the capabilities of all browsers to better support, and eventually disappear behind, the applications. "The browser may be the medium, but the applications are the message," he writes.
Fred Wilson describes Google's future as a three-legged stool: the Chrome browser, the Android mobile operating system and its numerous Web-based applications.
Disclosures: I don't own shares of any companies mentioned in this
post. And while Microsoft owns this blog, Microsoft does not control,
censor or otherwise have any editorial influence over what I write.
