Keyper7
March 20th, 2009, 03:43 PM
Heya,
Could you guys do me a favor? Please give me your opinions about the theory below and point any flaws to it. More facts to support it are also welcome. I just want to know if I'm being reasonable.
Google's primary objectives with Chrome:
1) stimulate development of faster Javascript engines
2) stimulate standards compliance by sharing the market evenly between Trident, Gecko and WebKit.
Why? Not because they are altruistic saints who are trying to make the Internet better. Simply because both things make the development of web applications, their primary business, much easier.
Bottom line: they are not interested at all in Chrome being the most popular browser. They simply want it to be popular enough.
Facts to support this theory:
a) Objective 1 has pretty much been achieved. After getting their asses kicked by Tracemonkey, Microsoft and Mozilla started focusing on fast Javascript engines. Both IE8 and FF3.1 will have much better engines and Microsoft went as far as publishing comparison studies.
b) Google chose WebKit despite supporting Mozilla financially. That's probably because sharing the market between just Gecko and Trident is not much better than the current situation. So they chose the third player with a lot of growth potential: WebKit, which was already the default engine for Apple users. Three engines with almost equal market shares would mean that no web developer could use the "developing just for engine X is enough" reasoning. I'd guess they will keep supporting Mozilla for a long time.
c) Google is prioritizing Windows. That makes sense: Linux and Apple users already realised a long time ago that IE is not the only browser on earth, so gaining Linux/Apple market share is not very relevant.
So, what d'ya think? :)
Could you guys do me a favor? Please give me your opinions about the theory below and point any flaws to it. More facts to support it are also welcome. I just want to know if I'm being reasonable.
Google's primary objectives with Chrome:
1) stimulate development of faster Javascript engines
2) stimulate standards compliance by sharing the market evenly between Trident, Gecko and WebKit.
Why? Not because they are altruistic saints who are trying to make the Internet better. Simply because both things make the development of web applications, their primary business, much easier.
Bottom line: they are not interested at all in Chrome being the most popular browser. They simply want it to be popular enough.
Facts to support this theory:
a) Objective 1 has pretty much been achieved. After getting their asses kicked by Tracemonkey, Microsoft and Mozilla started focusing on fast Javascript engines. Both IE8 and FF3.1 will have much better engines and Microsoft went as far as publishing comparison studies.
b) Google chose WebKit despite supporting Mozilla financially. That's probably because sharing the market between just Gecko and Trident is not much better than the current situation. So they chose the third player with a lot of growth potential: WebKit, which was already the default engine for Apple users. Three engines with almost equal market shares would mean that no web developer could use the "developing just for engine X is enough" reasoning. I'd guess they will keep supporting Mozilla for a long time.
c) Google is prioritizing Windows. That makes sense: Linux and Apple users already realised a long time ago that IE is not the only browser on earth, so gaining Linux/Apple market share is not very relevant.
So, what d'ya think? :)