> Less important IMHO than Chrome vs. Firefox vs. IE is the fact that we now find ourselves in a world where there are three serious competitors for browser mindshare instead of one dominant one. [..] Bravo!
I like the sentiment and agree with most of it. But we are definitely not in a good place quite yet.
It looks like Chrome will overtake Firefox this year on desktop. It will likely also overtake IE on desktop, simply because the number of people forced to use IE - in big corporations - is small compared to the number of normal users. So IE will continue to go down quite a lot more.
So Chrome will be the #1 browser on desktop. But that's just one side of things. Chrome will also be the #1 mobile browser because it will be bundled on Android, the #1 mobile OS. Combine desktop and mobile, and Chrome will get a dominating majority. (ChromeBooks might also take off, making the control even more complete - but it's hard to say if they will.)
Chrome's rise is the result of a great product and a truly massive marketing campaign. But it looks like it will succeed far too much, potentially replacing the currently open and competitive space with one dominated once again by a single player. And just like the previous dominator, this one has other products it can and will leverage with the browser (as we saw indications of in the leaked Dart memo, and as we currently see with Chrome-only features of gmail and google docs).
Yes, Chrome is mostly open source, so that by itself makes it less evil than the previous browser monopoly. But even an open source project that is controlled by one company, and used to further its own ends - which legally it must as a for-profit - can be a very bad thing. We can't blindly assume that what is good for Google will always be good for everyone else - if that ever was the case.
I like the sentiment and agree with most of it. But we are definitely not in a good place quite yet.
It looks like Chrome will overtake Firefox this year on desktop. It will likely also overtake IE on desktop, simply because the number of people forced to use IE - in big corporations - is small compared to the number of normal users. So IE will continue to go down quite a lot more.
So Chrome will be the #1 browser on desktop. But that's just one side of things. Chrome will also be the #1 mobile browser because it will be bundled on Android, the #1 mobile OS. Combine desktop and mobile, and Chrome will get a dominating majority. (ChromeBooks might also take off, making the control even more complete - but it's hard to say if they will.)
Chrome's rise is the result of a great product and a truly massive marketing campaign. But it looks like it will succeed far too much, potentially replacing the currently open and competitive space with one dominated once again by a single player. And just like the previous dominator, this one has other products it can and will leverage with the browser (as we saw indications of in the leaked Dart memo, and as we currently see with Chrome-only features of gmail and google docs).
Yes, Chrome is mostly open source, so that by itself makes it less evil than the previous browser monopoly. But even an open source project that is controlled by one company, and used to further its own ends - which legally it must as a for-profit - can be a very bad thing. We can't blindly assume that what is good for Google will always be good for everyone else - if that ever was the case.