With Chrome, Google Busts a Move Right Out of Microsoft's Playbook

by Sam Dean - Nov. 21, 2008Comments (18)

Hmm, in all the talk I've seen about how Google will proceed with spreading Chrome out to new platforms, and to mobile devices, I haven't seen any discussion of the company pursuing the idea of getting its open source browser pre-installed on hardware platforms. Now, Google is confirming that it will probably do just that. It is likely to pursue deals with major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to put Chrome on their computers and devices. This is a move straight out of Microsoft's 1990s playbook. If Mozilla could get aggressive about this too, we could see Internet Explorer facing more serious competition than ever.

For millions of computer users around the world, a blue "e" means Internet. The "e" icon representing Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser stares right at them from their desktops when they buy new computers. That's how Internet Explorer gained what was once more than 95 percent share of the browser market, taking that market share directly from Netscape, which once had over 80 percent share. Microsoft's share now sits at 71 percent according to Net Applications, which provides this informative graphic, showing market share:

Firefox is the primary browser that has driven Internet Explorer's market share erosion, by arriving first with innovations such as tabbed browsing, and by encouraging a flourishing universe of useful browser extensions. But, at least on the PC side, Internet Explorer remains the browser that buyers of new hardware see after unboxing. Microsoft was required by the Justice Department to allow for other browsers on new hardware, but go down to your local Best Buy and stroll around to see which browser is staring back at you on the computers.

Now, Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management at Google, has told The Times of London:

"We will probably do distribution deals. We could work with an OEM and have them ship computers with Chrome pre-installed."

Google, much more so than Mozilla, has enough global brand recognition, money, and savvy to make a big deal of this. What Pichai is talking about there is exactly how Internet Explorer gained its dominance. Microsoft wooed Dell, Compaq, HP, Gateway, Acer and many other companies into making its browser the default choice on Windows desktops.

Chrome currently has just under one percent market share, according to NetApplications. That number could rise significantly through this effort. Mozilla doesn't have the kind of money required to get the significant deals in this space, but Google definitely does.

By the way, Pichai also confirmed that Mac and Linux versions of Chrome will arrive in the first half of next year, which Kristin was writing about here.


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18 Comments
 

wrong; opera had tabs before firefox. you might want to fix that.


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Netcaptor had tabs before Opera or Firefox. You might want to learn your browser history, sloshy.


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Opera had the idea before Mozilla, but Firefox was what brought the innovation to more than a handful of users


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AFAIK, Galeon was the first browser to have tabs.


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To keep this in perspective, remember that certain 'flavors' of Linux are finding there way into the hardware layer of many notebooks and desktops. You will find no Microsoft alternative for this hardware 'integration'. While I do love seeing Linux out there in the real world to this extent; keep this in mind when you trash the 'big' guys. We don't have a problem when it's Linux, but we do when it comes from one of them?


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since it's so popular (though not relevant to this OStatic post) I'll enlighten you all, with info straight from wikipedia (the "tabbed browsing" article):


"Tabbed browsing refers to use of internet browsers which allow multiple tabs (sub-windows) to be opened within the window the browser is open in, each tab displaying a web-page. As of 2006 most web browsers support tabbed browsing. Opera was the first tabbed browsing interface (in 1994, using MDI), followed later by NetCaptor in 1998, later by IBrowse in 1999, then Mozilla in 2001, Konqueror and Safari in 2003 and Internet Explorer 7[1] in 2006. Google Chrome, released in 2008, also has tabbed browsing capabilities."


so, FTR and FYI, Opera was first, by 4 whole years.


anonymous@ although I didn't find a date on Galeon, it was built on and is designed for the Gnome desktop, which didn't exist until 1997


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Great, another google product to uninstall when getting new computers.


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bxlbjorn,


Those statistics are limited to their site. The average user isn't someone who is interested in web design or programming. The users that visit that site are more tech savvy, and are going to use Internet Explorer alternatives, because they find them superior. Most users aren't even aware of alternative browsers.


As stated by W3Schools:


"W3Schools is a website for people with an interest for web technologies. These people are more interested in using alternative browsers than the average user. The average user tends to use Internet Explorer, since it comes preinstalled with Windows. Most do not seek out other browsers."


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Interesting that:


Microsoft bundles IE with their OS = Bad guy

Google bundles Chrome with other OS = Agressive marketing


The reason that IE beat Netscape wasn't solely due to being 'given away' with the OS, but for me it was due to the fact that IE4 was so far superior to the dreadful trainwreck that was Netscape 3.


They had to throw away Netscape 3 entirely and re-start with Gecko before they could compete with IE again, by which time, the game was over.


S


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Hummmm....

Wich OEM will accept a beta(?) program on it's 0.3.154.9 version????


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Flavio, does it really make a difference with nowadays beta hardware?


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@Simbosan


Microsoft didn't get in trouble because they bundled IE. They got in trouble because they disallowed OEMs from bundling any *other* browser if they wanted Windows. Had they not done that bundling IE wouldn't have been an issue.


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This is another case of Microsoft versus the rest of the world.


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Just for anybody interested, I own a fairly popular website that gets a large number of hits from the gaming community and 51% of those hits come from firefox whereas 47% of them come from IE, the other 2% are assorted other browsers.


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What financial advantage does this have for Google?


Or are they simply trying to "hurt" or "affect" Microsoft?


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yeah but most gamers are techies in some way or another, any serious gamer has built his own pc, had to do some hacks and tricks to get decent fps for the latest games etc. etc. where an alternate browser is not in use chances are you will find ppl who use a pc for work, checking emails, and surfing, nothing else. and i am sure that most ppl out there have heard of alternate web browsers, they just don't care, ie works, it's already installed, and they are familiar with it.


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The problem with Chrome is that it is really incompatible with a lot of websites functionality that are designed for IE. I find myself having to switch to back to IE quite a lot because the save button or the confirm button doesn't work.


In fact it doesn't really play well with Windows, either. I have problems getting it to cut and paste some times, not too mention some other add-ons that work for every other windows application aren't available in Chrome.


I still like it when that one tab blows up and the rest of them still run fine though....


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IE has secret shortcuts that gives you '1337' hacks.


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