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Chrome´s performance and compliance not enough for growth?

posted by Mattias Ganslandt on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 1:51 am

It has been a year since Google launched its browser Chrome. So far its market share is below 3 percent. Despite superior technical performance, standards-compliance and open source it is still struggling well behind market leader IE and runner-up Firefox. Perhaps this experience serves to prove the old truth that innovation is not only about invention but also about marketing and distribution? At least this seems to be the lesson drawn at Googleplex.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has a market share of 67 percent. The only other browser with a considerable market share is Mozzilla’s Firefox- with approximately 23 percent. There is significant drop down to third place, held by Apple’s Safari, with a 4 percent share. Chrome is at fourth place with 3 percent, only just beating Opera (see more data from Net Applications on http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0).

At launch, Chrome was said to beat Explorer in security, user availability and performance; and initial reactions supported this (see e.g. http://www.thetechnewsblog.com/2008/09/02/google-chrome-review-first-impressions/). Some security issues where however found in the beta version but these were quickly corrected.

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Since then Google has continued to develop Chrome. Notably it scores well, relative to IE and Firefox, in standards-compliance tests, see e.g. http://acid3.acidtests.org/. But still no significant increase in usage has been noticed.

More recently, Google seems to have concluded that technical performance does not suffice. An interesting Google-presentation (self-image?) of Chrome with a heavy tech-focus is given by this cartoon http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/. Recent development suggests however that Google will put more effort into marketing and distribution. It was recently made public that Google has formed a distribution alliance with Sony, which involves shipping all new Vaios with Chrome as the installed browser (see article on http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/89f80508-9663-11de-84d1-00144feabdc0.html). This could possibly give Google the boost it so clearly needs. However, with Vaio being a relatively small player on the global PC market Chrome usage is not likely to increase dramatically just yet, but it offers exactly the kind of exposure Chrome needs for it to have a chance in challenging the IE and Firefox.

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Mattias Ganslandt says:

Good points (as always). I certainly agree that the value of choice should not be underestimated. The very existence of potential – rather than actual – competition is a powerful force. For that reason I am confident that Microsoft as well as Mozzilla put great interest in Chrome’s development both as a browser and as an OS. Let me add that from a user perspective market share does matter. To the extent that a product is superior – faster, lighter and more standards-compliant – one would like to see that product to get consumed as it increases market efficiency.
arebentisch says:

Chrome uses Nokia’s webkit technology for rendering as does Apple with Safari. A minor investment and it pays off. Google has also at least one other browser as a technology study http://code.google.com/p/arora/It is not necessary for Google to gain significant browser market share, it is sufficient for them to keep the bottleneck channel competitive and eat into the Google publisher-id based revenue of other browser suppliers.More interesting is certainly the challenge with Chrome OS which is pushed by the hardware manufacturers. You can expect it to eat into operating system niche market and also here market domination does not matter. We observe an increasing interest in lightweight Linux solutions, as a shameless self-promotion for instance our LXDE desktop environment improves the consumer experience of eeePC users. It performs significantly faster than current Linux netbook solutions. For netbook devices software performance matters a lot. This is why you get the support of the hardware manufacturers, in particular hardware providers across Asia, which use the alternative operating system solutions as a strategic bargaining tool.

Chrome´s performance and compliance not enough for growth?

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Mattias Ganslandt

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