IE was free in windows
a few years later , netscape generation 2 evolved into mozilla and gains popularity (of course there are separatist factions like opera , safari and various linux browsers)
and now , the war intensifies with a new player in the game.
introducing .... Google Chrome
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMMRPJEpp2c&eurl=http://kalel7.blogspot.com/2008/09/googles-new-browser-chrome.html
http://gears.google.com/chrome/ (the link to dl after 3rd sept 08)
notable mentions about it
excerpts from http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html
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Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.
On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn't the browser that matters. It's only a tool to run the important stuff -- the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7593106.stm
But competing with the established browser names could be harder, he thinks.
"Mozilla's Firefox is very well respected and yet it commands less than 20% of the browser market which just shows how hard it is to overtake an incumbent although Google does have almost unparallelled ability to promote it to almost the entire online audience," he said.
Chrome will be available for download from the morning of Tuesday 2rd September, PST.
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http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10030185-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5
[quote]
Mozilla's John Lilly welcomes the competition and continued partnership with Google, but can't help but strike an ominous chord:
...[T]he parts where [Google and Mozilla are] different, with different missions, will continue to be separate. Mozilla's mission is to keep the Web open and participatory....
Lilly doesn't say it, but presumably he could have finished the sentence this way: "...And Google's mission is to drive as much traffic and advertisements through its sites and services." This is where I believe Chrome could both thrive and stagnant
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Indeed, successful as Google has been, it's even more notable for its many failures. Take a look at all the products and services it offers. How many do you use? For that matter, how many have you even heard of? A handful?
Many will suggest that Google's entrance to this market, like others that it has entered (Froogle with comparison shopping, anyone?), is game over for Firefox. I couldn't disagree more, and here's a key reason:
Google has failed in its attempts to become a software distributor. Yes, the Google Desktop has attracted some fans, but nowhere near a respectable minority. Google knows how to piggyback on others' desktop clients. It knows how to monetize Web services fantastically well. It knows far less about driving downloads and uptake of its products, excepting its core search functionality.
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the funniest/comprehensive :
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-09-01-n47.html
Today there was a comic book in my mail, sent by Google and drawn by no less than Scott McCloud, creator of the classic Understanding Comics. Within the 38 pages, which I’ve scanned and put up, in very readable format Google gives the technical details into a project of theirs: an open source browser called Google Chrome. The book points to www.google.com/chrome, but I can’t see anything live there yet. In a nut-shell, here’s what the comic announces Google Chrome to be:
* Google Chrome is Google’s open source browser project. As rumored before under the name of “Google Browser”, this will be based on the existing rendering engine Webkit. Furthermore, it will include Google’s Gears project.
* The browser will include a JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8, built from scratch by a team in Denmark, and open-sourced as well so other browsers could include it. One aim of V8 was to speed up JavaScript performance in the browser, as it’s such an important component on the web today. Google also say they’re using a “multi-process design” which they say means “a bit more memory up front” but over time also “less memory bloat.” When web pages or plug-ins do use a lot of memory, you can spot them in Chrome’s task manager, “placing blame where blame belongs.”
* Google Chrome will use special tabs. Instead of traditional tabs like those seen in Firefox, Chrome puts the tab buttons on the upper side of the window, not below the address bar.
* The browser has an address bar with auto-completion features. Called ’omnibox’, Google says it offers search suggestions, top pages you’ve visited, pages you didn’t visit but which are popular amd more. The omnibox (“omni” is a prefix meaning “all”, as in “omniscient” – “all-knowing”) also lets you enter e.g. “digital camera” if the title of the page you visited was “Canon Digital Camera”. Additionally, the omnibox lets you search a website of which it captured the search box; you need to type the site’s name into the address bar, like “amazon”, and then hit the tab key and enter your search keywords.
* As a default homepage Chrome presents you with a kind of “speed dial” feature, similar to the one of Opera. On that page you will see your most visited webpages as 9 screenshot thumbnails. To the side, you will also see a couple of your recent searches and your recently bookmarked pages, as well as recently closed tabs.
* Chrome has a privacy mode; Google says you can create an “incognito” window “and nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer.” The latest version of Internet Explorer calls this InPrivate. Google’s use-case for when you might want to use the “incognito” feature is e.g. to keep a surprise gift a secret. As far as Microsoft’s InPrivate mode is concerned, people also speculated it was a “porn mode.”
* Web apps can be launched in their own browser window without address bar and toolbar. Mozilla has a project called Prism that aims to do similar (though doing so may train users into accepting non-URL windows as safe or into ignoring the URL, which could increase the effectiveness of phishing attacks).
* To fight malware and phishing attempts, Chrome is constantly downloading lists of harmful sites. Google also promises that whatever runs in a tab is sandboxed so that it won’t affect your machine and can be safely closed. Plugins the user installed may escape this security model, Google admits.
This looks like a very interesting project, and I think it can’t hurt to have more competition in the browser area. Google is playing this as nicely as possible by open-sourcing things, with perhaps part of the reason to try to defend against monopoly accusations – after all, Google already owns a lot of what’s happening inside the browser, and some may feel owning a browser too could be a little too much power for a single company (Google could, for instance, release browser features that benefit their sites more than most other sites... as can Microsoft with Internet Explorer). For now, until Chrome is released in a testable version, how much of the speed, stability and user interface promises will be fullfilled – and how much of the interface you’ll be able to configure in case you don’t like it – remains to be seen.
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Another step in taking over the world , albeit virtually while google probably gonna do things the most efficiently , the major fault/strength they have is that the take-up/adoptation is usually slow.
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