Harvard Business Publishing

Google's long awaited web browser was released to the world on Tuesday. The hype and speculation glands of bloggers everywhere are in overdrive, despite few commentators actually using the new browser, nor stopping to consider what we can learn from how browser wars in the past were won and lost. (Disclosure: I worked on IE 1 to 5 for Microsoft, and am currently a happy Firefox 3.0 user).

Here's a quick rundown of what I've read about Chrome, with insights added:

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington writes:

Chrome, the Webkit-based Google browser that launches tomorrow at Google.com/chrome, will give them a real foothold on the desktop and way more control over how web applications perform. While it seems that Chrome is aimed at IE and Firefox, the target is really Windows... Chrome is nothing less than a full on desktop operating system that will compete head on with Windows... I love Chrome already and I haven't even tried it yet (nor will I be using it much soon, since it will only work on Windows for now). But Google's days of unchecked growth may soon come to an end. They are quickly becoming the new Microsoft.

For starters, Google does not want to be in the Operating System business. They do not want to be responsible for device drivers and hardware compatibility issues that are the bane of the Windows team's existence. They are more than happy to have Windows continue to be blamed for all the crashes and pains caused by those problems, while they work to render the Operating system irrelevant. Netscape had the exact same battle plan in 1996. Microsoft, in response, followed suit in 1997, with it's DHTML platform running on browsers for the Mac, Windows and Unix. If the browser war does rage again, we are fighting over already bloody ground. And its worth reviewing the playbook used then, as its likely to come up again now.

But more to my point, there is no war yet. This is a shot across the bow. They've done the minimum required to make a point, see the response, and repeat. That is all that has happened so far. It has been a bargain for Google; a small team working for 18 months has achieved more attention in a week than many companies will get in a lifetime. But until we see how Microsoft, Firefox and web developers respond, there's not much of a story.

Fellow Harvard blogger Anthony Scott writes:

Of course, it is far too early to make definitive proclamations about Chrome. The most critical question from a disruptive perspective is the degree to which Google is able to obtain differentiated performance by integrating together its applications and its browser. If one plus one really equals something that is meaningfully more than two, Microsoft will struggle to match Google's performance, let alone deal with the ramifications of a disruptive business model.

Jargon alert: Anthony is a smart guy but he gets the award for most jargon in a post on Chrome. Differentiated performance? Disruptive business model? I'm not smart enough to figure out what he's trying to say. It's a stretch to call a new kind of web browser that runs CSS, HTML, Javascript disruptive by any definition, as most of what it does, and how it works, is exactly the same from the customer's perspective, by design. And as far as disruptive business model, the browser has no business: it's given away for free like most browsers are.

As best I can understand his point, we have to wait and see if Google Docsdemonstrate superior performance on Chrome. Good point. But if they do, why isn't it mentioned anywhere? And even if they do in a future release, we're back to the real test of disruption: what will it be about a faster Google Docs or G-mail that gets Outlook and Office users to switch? Chrome, for end-users, is largely the same as existing browsers. The difference is in performance and architecture, features that developers need to choose to take advantage of: an unpopular choice for a browser with less than 1% market share.

A better question is how far is Google willing to go to bleed Firefox, a project they still fund, but now compete with, of its market share to drive Chrome? The Firefox blog is dead silent this week. As is Opera's blog, Opera being the ever-hardworking but often forgotten player in the field.

The most sensible commentary came from Nick Carr:

Although I'm sure Google would be thrilled if Chrome grabbed a sizable chunk of market share, winning a "browser war" is not its real goal. Its real goal, embedded in Chrome's open-source code, is to upgrade the capabilities of all browsers so that they can better support (and eventually disappear behind) the applications. The browser may be the medium, but the applications are the message.

Browsers earn no revenue. When Netscape fell apart in 1998/9, Microsoft disbanded its Internet Explorer team within a year to put engineers on projects that earn money. There is little money in browsers, and Google doesn't need to be the market leader. All it needs, as Carr points out, is to get the features in needs into browsers so it can do its thing. The question is how much market share does a Chrome or Chrome-comparable Firefox need to attain before Microsoft swallows hard and enters another browser feature war? If it doesn't, it risks a slow market share drain. And if it does, it supports Google's other ambitions.

If you want more analysis on Chrome as a browser, read my full review of Chrome here.

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