[tt] NYT: Search Giant Wants a Share of Browser Market

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Search Giant Wants a Share of Browser Market
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/technology/03browser.html

By MIGUEL HELFT

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Google's new browser, Chrome, is named for
something it mostly lacks.

Among software developers, chrome refers to the menus, buttons and
boxes that surround the main window of a program. The Google
browser, which was unveiled Tuesday, dispenses with most of these in
favor of a stripped-down look that is in keeping with the spare
aesthetic of the company's search site.

The clever name sets a more understated tone than those of the
browsers Chrome will compete with: Explorer, Safari and Firefox. But
in a roundabout way it also hints that the most ambitious elements
of the browser are invisible.

Chrome sharpens Google's already intense competition with Microsoft,
the maker of Internet Explorer, by far the most popular browser on
the Web. Google hopes that Chrome will loosen Microsoft's grip on
the browser market, which it fears Microsoft could leverage to
promote its struggling search and advertising business at the
expense of Google's.

But Google also said Chrome was created in large part to allow users
to interact with increasingly powerful programs that run in a
browser window, like Gmail, Google Docs and applications created by
other companies. The company claims Chrome is the first browser
built from scratch with such applications in mind.

"I think it is a very basic, fast engine to run Web apps," Sergey
Brin, a Google co-founder and its president of technology, said
during a news conference at the company's headquarters in Mountain
View.

The browser's design underscores Google's vision that in the next
few years the digital lives of computer users will change
significantly. Rather than rely on programs that run on personal
computers, people will increasingly use software that is delivered
over the Web from powerful data centers. They will store their data
on remote servers and be able to access it wherever they are. This
approach would make operating systems like Microsoft's Windows much
less important.

Microsoft also believes the Web will grow in importance, but it sees
the PC remaining at the center of many computing tasks.

By adding speed and new functions to the inner workings of the
browser, Chrome will encourage software makers to create
increasingly sophisticated programs that can run on the Web, Mr.
Brin said.

"A lot of things are difficult to do on the Web," he said. Chrome
will allow developers to overcome those difficulties, he said, and
"you will be able to do more and more online."

Microsoft quickly dismissed Google's claims that Chrome was better
suited for applications.

"It is not the first or best browser for Web applications," said
Dean Hachamovitch, general manager for Internet Explorer at
Microsoft. "It is the first from Google."

Mr. Hachamovitch added: "I think that the functionality available in
Internet Explorer 8, for what people do every day again and again,
is better."

To advance its vision of Web computing at the expense of
Microsoft's, Google has been courting third-party software makers
for more than a year. As part of its efforts, Google has created
enhancements to Web browsing technology that it has made available
to others in an open-source format, meaning it can be freely shared
and modified.

For instance, last year it unveiled Google Gears, a set of tools
meant to allow Web applications like Gmail to continue working even
when users are not connected to the Internet -- a hurdle that
remains one of the major shortcomings of many online applications.

Analysts said the development of Chrome appears to reflect a
decision on Google's part that it needs to take a more direct and
active role in furthering Web browsing technology.

"Google needed to make a move to make sure it controls its own
destiny," said Peter O'Kelly, an independent analyst.

Chrome forgoes many of the menus and bars that are common in most
browsers, and it combines into one the two separate boxes where
users normally type Web addresses and search keywords. As users
type, Chrome figures out whether a term represents a search term or
a Web site address.

Individual tabs in the browser are designed to work independently,
so if a Web page crashes one of them, the rest of the program
continues to run.

Google also claims that Chrome is far faster at loading Web pages
and running applications, features that it said would persuade
programmers that they could rely on browsers to run increasingly
complex software.

Google said others are free to use and modify its enhancements in
their own browsers. And while the company made it clear that it
hoped to chip away at Microsoft's dominance in the Web browser
market, it said it would benefit if all major Internet browsers
became better able to run Web applications.

Chrome's success is by no means guaranteed. Many of Google's
products and services, like Google Finance and Google Video, have
received a lot of attention and hype at the time they were
introduced, but managed to achieve only modest success. And Chrome's
gains, at least initially, may not come at the expense of Internet
Explorer, but rather of Firefox, the open-source browser managed by
the Mozilla Corporation.

While Internet Explorer comes preinstalled on Windows computers,
Firefox, like Chrome, requires people to download it. As such, these
two browsers may appeal to a similar set of users who actively seek
alternatives to the programs that come with their PCs.

But John Lilly, the chief executive of Mozilla, said Chrome would
help further define Firefox as the only independent browser
dedicated to creating a better Web experience, not furthering the
agenda of a single company. The publicity around Chrome may also
encourage people to consider alternatives to their built-in
browsers.

Just last week, Google and Mozilla extended for three years an
agreement under which Google pays Mozilla to be the default search
engine on Firefox. Mr. Lilly said he knew about Chrome when he
renewed the agreement with Google. He also said that the extent to
which Google would contribute to the open-source community was not
yet clear.

"We have yet to see what open-source means to Google," he said.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer holds 73 percent of the browser
market, according to Net Applications, a research firm. Firefox's
market share has climbed to 19 percent, while Apple's Safari has 6
percent.

Google refused to discuss its expectations for Chrome's adoption by
users. It said that it was likely to sign deals with others to
further its distribution.

Mitchell Kapor, a computing pioneer and technology investor who is
on the board of the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, which owns the
Mozilla Corporation, said Chrome lacked some features that users had
come to expect.

"It's a mistake to believe that their entrance will dramatically
alter market share in the short term," Mr. Kapor said. But he noted
that "having a platform that is better suited to run Web
applications is an enormous asset."

Steve Lohr and Brad Stone contributed reporting.