Mousetrap weblog: Will Internet Explorer 8 cost Google dear? | All about Google Chrome

Google has declared war on Microsoft with the launch across the world last night of its new web browser.

As the first internet users tried out the free Chrome browser, analysts predicted a new front line in the battle to dominate the way in which users access and interact with the web.

Google has been working on the browser project for some years, but decided that, with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser hoarding three quarters of the market, there was no more time to lose. Consumers in 100 countries began to download the software last night after its existence was leaked a day early, when Google prematurely sent out by post a comic designed to explain its features.

Chrome is designed to run on Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Versions for other systems, including Apple’s Mac, are in the pipeline.

Microsoft unveiled a test version of its latest browser update Internet Explorer 8 last week. Updates included more tools for surfers to hide their online preferences, which could cut into the profits from targeted advertisements produced by Google.

Microsoft dismissed the threat posed by Chrome. Dean Hachamovitch, Internet Explorer’s manager, said: “The browser landscape is highly competitive, but people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips . . . and, more than any other browsing technology, puts them in control of their personal data online.”

Chrome promises to load pages more quickly and securely and includes a new engine for loading interactive JavaScript code, dubbed V8, designed to run the next generation of not-yet-invented web applications.

Google is pitching its browser as the new tool for the modern internet, with all its rich content, such as video and music. Sundar Pichai, vice-president of product management, said: “Google Chrome was built for today’s web and for the applications of tomorrow. We think of the browser as the window to the web — it’s a tool for users to interact with the websites and applications they care about, and it’s important that we don’t get in the way of that experience.”

That desire to become a kind of operating system for the emerging “cloud computing” world will set alarm bells ringing at Microsoft. Essentially, Google wants to tap into a growing trend for computing functions to take place not on individual desktops but on the internet itself (“the cloud”). Chrome could become part of a strategy to accelerate that process and make Microsoft’s software less useful.

Eric Tholomé, a Google product management director, said last night that browsers had become the pinch point through which frustrated Google engineers had to work, so they had decided to reinvent the product.

Although Google has a lucrative lead in internet searches, with about two thirds of the global market, it has been trying to extend its reach with a bundle of computer programs, including word-processing and spreadsheet applications, such as Google Docs. This is in direct competition with one of Microsoft’s biggest money-makers, its Office products suite, which includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Google has offered its products free over internet connections instead of requiring users to pay a licensing fee to install them on individual computers, as Microsoft typically does.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has tried to thwart Google by investing billions of dollars in the development of its own search engine. Microsoft’s doomed attempt to buy Yahoo! would have also boosted its ability to take on Google.

The last big browser war was won by Microsoft when it gained dominance in the 1990s against Netscape Navigator.

Until now, Google had been trying to undermine Internet Explorer by supporting Firefox, a web browser developed by the open-source Mozilla Foundation. According to estimates by Net Applications, the research firm, Internet Explorer is used by 74 per cent of computer users worldwide, against 18 per cent for Firefox. Google has recently extended its advertising alliance with Firefox to 2011.

Although not everything that Google touches turns to gold, analysts predicted that Chrome would be a formidable rival to Internet Explorer. Henry Blodget, of Silicon Alley Insider, said: “If you’re thinking about Chrome as just another web browser, you’re missing the larger point.

“In a couple of years, you won’t be downloading Google’s ‘browser’.

You’ll be downloading Google’s software — or, rather, you’ll be clicking on a series of Google icons that come pre-installed. Specifically, you’ll be working within a Google software environment that works sort of like Windows.”

Google says that “this is just the beginning” for Chrome. However, it will live or die on its merits. Millions are expected to download the software from www.google.com/chrome in the next few days, but it will take something pretty special to beat the inertia of all those users who have Internet Explorer already on their computers. The real test for Google began last night in the massive public test of Chrome: does it work? Is it fast and functional?

Times recommends

• Point-and-go computers consign mouse to history
• YoYotech Fi7epower: the world's fastest PC
• Bridging the gap between mind and machine