Has anybody tried this new browser out yet?
just read a news article about it. I might try it later when I get off work and see how well it runs
Google enters browser wars
Jefferson Graham
520 words
Wed Sep 3, 12:00 AM ET
USA Today
For some time, Google denied persistent Internet rumors that it would try to take on Microsoft with a competing Web browser.
Then two years ago, Google (GOOG) executives started having second thoughts. "We read all those rumors with amusement," said Google co-founder Sergey Brin on Tuesday. "Then we started thinking about it and realized it wasn't such a bad idea."
On Tuesday, Google introduced the previously denied Google Chrome browser at a news conference.
Google, which has worked closely with Mozilla on the development and promotion of the Firefox browser, decided it would be better to create its own browser than to dictate its demands to another company, Brin says. So engineers went to work creating a browser "from the ground up."
Google's move into the browser wars is a "much bigger deal than it seems on the surface" because we spend so much time online, says Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray. "This is the operating system of the future," he says. "Google wants you to start and end your day on Google."
Now, Google makes its money primarily from search advertising — those little text ads that appear next to search results — and has been trying to diversify into other areas of advertising, notably Web display and video ads, and traditional media such as radio and TV as well.
In search, Google had a 61.9% market share in July, according to researcher ComScore Media Metrix — up from 61.5% in June, while Microsoft fell to 8.9% in July, from 9.1% in June.
But Google's attempts to broaden online beyond search with such tools as free word processing and spreadsheet programs, "haven't taken off," Munster says. He thinks Google needs the browser to truly be competitive with Microsoft.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer is the most widely used browser, with 75% market share.
Still, IE is not a moneymaker for the software giant. Instead, Microsoft relies on its browser to draw users to its other services.
With its search market share trending down now, "Microsoft could lose even more market share if Google's browser takes off," Munster says. "And if Google's Apps finally start to take off, the holy grail of Microsoft's business" — the Office suite, which includes Word, Outlook and Excel — "could take a real hit."
Google, which in the past has attracted the wrath of privacy advocates for seeming to track a user's every move online, might again raise the hackles of some privacy advocates with its new browser. With Chrome, daily and hourly searches are tracked and noted in big type.
Google Vice President Sundar Pichai says Google's info tracking isn't any different from other browsers — just more pronounced because Google wants to bring more "transparency" to the process.
For those who don't want to be tracked, Google offers a new way of surfing, one it calls "Incognito." Google's Chrome can be found at
www.google.com/chrome and is available in 100 countries and in 43 languages.
In an unrelated move Tuesday, Google updated its popular Picasa photo editing and sharing application to include a new state-of-the-art photo-recognition feature.
Pictures get uploaded to Picasa Web Albums, where faces are then identified and cataloged.
