- Saturday, 21 November 2009
- INQ Mobile
- RSS
Money will buy a fine dog, but only kindness will make him wag his tail
Why is Microsoft worried about Chrome?
ONE OF THE STRANGER claims in Microsoft's latest defence brief to the EU Commission is that if the EU sanctions it for bundling Internet Exploder with Windows, that could give the ground to Google's Chrome.
This is a bit of an "Eh what?" moment for analysts, who look at Google's Chrome browser, with its market share of less than one per cent, as a bit of a non-competitor.
While it is true that Microsoft fears Google more than it fears divine retribution for its many sins, picking Chrome as its nemesis is a bit like shivering in fear when the other side picks the short fat asthmatic kid for its football team.
However, Chrome is actually not a half bad web browser. It is fast and easy to use and is just the sort of thing that OEMs might want to install in netbooks.
Armed with reasonably good Internet services and a fast browser, Google could become the threat that Linux or Apple have never been to Microsoft. However it requires a lot of crystal ball gazing to see that.
It assumes, for example that Microsoft will not react to Google's moves onto its turf. It also assumes that businesses in particular will be suckered into following the search outfit.
There is a good reason why businesses might not go near Chrome. Chrome hands business information over to Google. The gigantic Internet search company has claimed repeatedly that it does not intend to use the information it gathers, and its assurances might be enough for the great unwashed, but a business might be hard pressed to justify allowing such a huge potential security exposure as Chrome represents onto its systems.
If a business wants a speeded up browser that does not have the same baggage as Chrome, the new Firefox could be a much better choice. Even the newer Safari, which at least does not report to Apple your business's intimate secrets, might be a better choice.
But this is not the reason Microsoft is talking up the Google threat. The EU is a little nervous about Google's emerging power, not only in search but also in email, messaging, media delivery, applications software and cloud computing.
No one wants an outfit with that much power to stay on top too long, and in that Microsoft might find an ally in the EU Commission. The universe where Microsoft sank Netscape has fallen away and been replaced by another, more dangerous one. Microsoft, at its most extreme, controlled the PC operating system, the web browser and the office suite market. Google could conceivably gain a position to control everything on the Internet.
Every download of Chrome is another recruit lost to the other search engines and ultimately could slide into an Internet controlled by one company.
Again this is crystal ball stuff, but if the EU Commission needs an ally to help prevent Google from taking control of the Internet, the best one it might find could be Microsoft. µ
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
true story...
Even if the EU doesn't like monopolies, being a monopoly is not a crime.
ABUSING a monopoly is a crime, as Microsoft knows only too well. Unless MS can show that Google has abused its alleged monopoly, it has no case.
You can't just say "Hey, Google gets most of the web advertising, it is a monopoly, I want some of that business". You have to show that Google did something unethical that cost you business. I haven't seen any evidence of Google doing anything except producing better search results.
Forget Chrome ... use SRWare's IRON! no ET phones home malarkey.
The argument is that since Google is the default search engine in all the other browsers, restricting IE hands even more control of search to Google.
Yeah, it's a terrible argument, but your article is based on entirely the wrong premise.
i gave chrome a chance and wished i didnt
when you exit it, it leaves a process running in task manager! whats all that about? sinister...
also, when i uninstalled it, it left folders dotted about on the hard drive. and they have the cheek to wonder why people havent warmed to it?
EU will look into how monopolies behave.
And try to react if they behave badly.
Take Microsoft and Intel as good examples (and there are many more), but why would they start bundling this or that company`s behaviour into some funny mess about future behaviour.
There is no law against monopolies as long as they behave.
Microsoft is not worried about Chrome. It is worried about its cash cows, namely office and windows. Here only a minor investment would be required to kill that business and exactly that should be made if Microsoft does not behave. The company is a danger to our national security. Time to shoot the cash cows.
We all use chrome in the office - it's so fast and I can have a million browser windows going without the systems slowing to a crawl (aka Firefoxitis)
Couldn't do without it now
Chrome beats IE by a mile. It's even faster and a lot less bloated than Firefox. Chrome is the best browser. I still miss some FF plugins.
... why Micro$haft is "worried" about Chrome.
Theyre trying to weasel out of a large fine for monopoly abuse, or an investigation, or whatever.
Like a (purely hypothetical) moron trying to prop up a failing presidency, they need a bogie [.us: booger] man.
Now, who to choose that .eu might believe is a credible threat to la $haft?
The Linux community? Ha ha, no, seriously.
Isnt Google the obvious choice?
Chrome is just Google's failed attempt to make the Mozilla folks behave. Users don't want any vendor-supplied browser. That's why they prefer independent developers like Mozilla or Opera, that have shown they care about the web at large. Chrome and Safari are both based on Webkit, which is more modern than IE8's engine but not as good as Firefox's or Opera's engine. Only Firefox and Opera do MathML (TeX-on-the-web), for example. This enables scientific and e-learning content without resorting to PostScript or PDF. And its accessible, too. The only thing I like about Webkit is its ability to do kerning.
I don't get the fuss about search engine market share. Google is simply a synonym for Search. Then there's Yahoo. Both have their loyal user bases. Netscape killer Microsoft is not an internet company. And they never will be. People just hate them for what they have done. Just recently, they tried to force their inferior browser on users of Firefox, Safari, and other browsers.
Rot-in-hell Microsoft! The European Commission is gonna make you bleed. You are asking for it.
Everyone I know uses chrome now. I haven't found a reason to use any other browser. The other options are all slower, eat up more cpu time, and don't offer anything I need over what chrome has. Everyone I know who's tried it loves it and has switched.
I Hope the EU makes Google stop snooping around peoples personal habits.
Google logs every site and save your usage profile and stats on their servers, until the EU does something about this Google will reign - and yes SRWares Iron is a good!
Every new competing search engine that started up has been miffed out by Googles practises. Look at the crawlers/spider - notice how they never return results from other engine based site, (i dont mean other engines) I mean the results or information.
Instead they have started destroying companies like wolfram etc
Listen you inept fanbois, the reason why Microsoft is screaming Google's name is because... If the EU forces Microsoft to allow other browsers as standard in their OS, then the browser company with the most money will win. Mozilla has no money to spare, but who does... Google. Google will have the ability to buy its way through every single vendor out there, and upon the fresh bootup of VendorX's PC, you will have Chrome staring you in the face with no alternative. Google's market share for the browser market will skyrocket exponentially.
Chrome allows you to turn web apps into pseudo-desktop apps. That directly threatens their cash cows like Office, Outlook, etc.
It also makes the OS the browser is running on irrelevant.
Chrome and FF simply do not respect fully the properties available in Cognos BI 8.3 Report Studio.
I'm not sure if IE 8 does. IE 8 has its drawbacks. I may use it on Vista, but prefer IE 7 on XP.
It's not asif the world + dog won't improve. Even so, you can't flog either to a dead horse.
What the heck? Can't you see the option to turn it off? They even ask you at the time of install if you want to send them anonymous usage statistics to help make Chrome better (just like many non-Google products). You can just opt out. Or if you forgot to while installing, there's an option for it in the settings. If you're uncomfortable with search suggestions, there's an option to turn it off as well.
Isn't it obvious? Google is just paving the way to produce an operating system.
Microsoft is done either way. They're finally reaping the rewards of decades of subversive and nefarious megalomania.
On the net, technological superiority is king, and google has it in spades. MS simply can't compete, nor can they suppress, what is clearly a better business plan.
Chrome shall replace Internet Explorer, it shall replace Explorer! It shall be the Desktop GUI of choice, like KDE is.
The same shall happen to OS X and everything else it can run on. Bring it on Google, give me the cloud, I want all my data kept on your servers! :D It'll be great living on the edge, like a new OS to toy with every day. Patching it daily with all the beta updates updates shall be exciting. In fact it shall be geek heaven, since geeks love beta and everything Google has is always in beta. Bring on the alpha! :D It's the new beta to beat over for true geeks :D
I also love Google's new technology that beats the crap out of JAVA. We shall finally have something that's way better than JAVA in every way, and it has the best security to boot! No more hacks, viruses, as Google shall be in direct control of my hardware.
Bring it on! Google 4 the Universe..
MS isn't worried about Chrome, that's a ridiculous statement you're making here. MS is worried about being forced to offer other browsers like Chrome, Firefox or Opera, because they ALL use Google as default search engine. So Microsoft just doesn't want to help Google to dominate the search engine market even more. That's what they told the EU.
"Chrome and FF simply do not respect fully the properties available in Cognos BI 8.3 Report Studio."
That's a problem with Cognos, not in Firefox or Chrome. Cognos reports are unusably slow and cr*ppy anyways, so why bother? There are other shops in town.
Sure Chrome is very fast but I don't see any real speed difference between it and a stock install of Firefox3. The speed seems to come from being completely barebones with virtually no useful features.
FF is only slow when you start plying it with dozens of add-ons that slow down the page loads. I find the load times a nuisance but as a web developer extensions like Firebug make FireFox utterly indispensable IMHO. Until Chrome can offer a similar library of useful extensions it's never going to cut it in my book.
"An enemy of my enemy is my friend ..."
I like MS bundling IE with winblows..
1) Install Winblows
2) Fire up IE
3) Type in www.firefox.com
4) Download and install Firefox
5) Delete IE shortcuts.
Can't just delete/uninstall IE, cause there are a few "other than well educated" software devs that for some reason call it by name instead of just asking to bring up the system's default browser.
LoCatus
"Isn't it obvious? Google is just paving the way to produce an operating system."
You mean something like Android? Maybe on a netbook? :)
Cheers,
John
I use Chrome because I find it faster at tab browsing than either IE8 or Firefox, but I still use Yahoo as my default search engine/homepage
For email, I have both a hotmail account and a Gmail account. On this machine, only Google Chrome only functions perfectly with Hotmail, and for Gmail I have to use IE.
This fight is rather about application model: OS apps vs web apps. Between the biggest hosting company and the vole. It's rather about distribution channels: M$ version is : if you want to use computer you have to buy (sequence of products, sequence of partners...). If google wins the vole will become yet another application vendor but it doesn't mean that google will become the only owner of the internet - it's demagogy.