Google Chrome's First Year

In the year since Google's Chrome browser first shipped, it is still a technology triumph. But early hopes that it would be a Microsoft-killer, challenging not just Internet Explorer, but the Windows operating system itself, now seem remote.

The technology looks as fresh now as it did on September 2, 2008 when it emerged into public beta. It's a lean, fast, secure, and stable open source Web browser, designed for the new generation of Web 2.0 apps, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Google's own Gmail and Docs. Other browsers, according to Google, are designed for the old way of using the Web, where you go to a site and look at some static pages. Increasingly, however, Web sites are full-fledged applications, and demand a different kind of Web browser.

Chrome is built differently than other browsers. Each tab is a separate process. If one tab crashes or grinds to a halt, it doesn't take down the whole browser. If you're writing a long, complicated document in Google Docs, or doing your tax returns online, you don't want to lose all your work just because the browser crashed while you were taking a break and uploading cat videos to Facebook. "It's really painful when one of those tabs crashes and takes the whole thing down," said Ian Fette, product manager for Google Chrome, in a phone interview.

Chrome features a fast, new JavaScript engine. Web 2.0 apps use a lot of JavaScript, which can slow a browser down.

But that's under the hood. The most noticeable difference between Chrome and other browsers are in the user interface: The tabs are located above the address bar, opposite of how it is in other browsers. The Windows version of Google Chrome doesn't include the standard title bar at the top. And Chrome doesn't have a lot of buttons and menus. Chrome is a streamlined, unadorned window onto the Web.

Google explained all this delightfully in a comic book that it released alongside Chrome.

Enthusiastic Start

Early reviews of Google Chrome were enthusiastic. In were my review, I wrote:

Some saw Chrome as a gun aimed at Microsoft. The headlines from a year ago say it. TechCrunch: "Meet Chrome, Google's Windows Killer." TechDirt: "Google's Browser Is A Warning Shot At Windows, Not At Internet Explorer." The rationale: By offering an easy way to access Web apps, Google Chrome would make desktop apps, and even the desktop operating system, irrelevant.

The anti-Microsoft argument became even louder when Google announced Chrome OS in July. All Chrome OS apps will run inside the browser. The Linux-based OS is designed to run on low-power computers and netbooks. And Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba are all working with Google to help it re-imagine the operating system. Chrome OS is still an enigma, and the company declined to comment on it this article. Beyond the initial announcement July, Google has yet to release any code for the OS. Moreover, Google already has a Linux-based operating system for low-powered devices, Android, so it's unclear how Chrome will fit in the company strategy.

Despite all the high initial hopes for Chrome, Microsoft is, so far, unbloodied. Chrome users are still just a tiny fraction of the Internet.

Market share numbers tell the story. Internet Explorer still has slightly more than two-thirds -- nearly 68% -- of the market, according to Net Applications. Firefox has 22%, Safari is a distant third with 4%, and Chrome is just under 3%.

Still A Contender

To illustrate just how little market share Chrome has: The Netscape browser, with 0.67% market share, is not too far behind Chrome, despite the fact that Netscape is basically dead technology. Netscape's last new version was two years ago; parent company AOL announced it was discontinuing support in March 2008.

Despite Chrome's small market share, Michael Masnick, editor of TechDirt, stands by his year-ago post. He acknowledges that Chrome's market share is small, but says that the technology still has the potential of hurting Windows by making the operating system irrelevant.

However, Google actually had a better chance of beating Microsoft before Google announced Chrome OS, Masnick said. "I think the most successful way to take on an established product like Microsoft Windows is not to attack it head-on," he said. "The best way to do it is come about it from below, get everyone using the product for a different reason, keep adding more and more features, and it would come to overtake the importance of Windows without people realizing it. It becomes a submarine competition, until people begin to realize they don't need Windows."

Examples of that kind of competition: Voice-over-IP competing with traditional telephony. And, going back in history, that's how personal computers competed with minicomputers, RISC workstations, and mainframes. Smartphones are showing signs of competing with PCs the same way, becoming the primary computing device for many people.

Chrome faces several big barriers to adoption, but is overcoming them. It was in beta for its first three months of availability, which made it less attractive to users, especially in the enterprise, where users traditionally don't want to mess with prerelease products. Google shipped Version 1 of the browser in December.

Overcoming Barriers

Chrome added extension support in May, a feature highly in demand by early adopters. Another obstacle to widespread adoption of Chrome: No Mac or Linux production versions. Google finally offered public, pre-release Mac and Linux versions of the browser in June; in typical Google style, they phrased the announcement as a tongue-in-cheek warning, and told users not to download the software. "Unless of course you are a developer or take great pleasure in incomplete, unpredictable, and potentially crashing software."

Google is making a top priority of shipping production versions of Chrome on the Mac and Linux.

Mac and Linux support are important to emerging software such as Chrome. While Mac and Linux have relatively small market share among all users, those platforms are very popular in the community of early adopters, the same people most likely to use Chrome.

Despite the problems, Google sees Chrome as successful. "We are extremely happy with the response we have seen from users and the adoption of Google Chrome thus far," Fette said in an e-mailed statement. "Already we have more than 30 million active users, which is exciting given the fact that many consumers still don't understand that they have a choice in browsers."

He added, "We are also encouraged by the progress made in the browser space over the past year and excited that many of Google Chrome's core areas of focus such as speed, simplicity and security have begun being adopted by other browser vendors as well. Spurring innovation in the industry is one of the key reasons why we launched Google Chrome and made it an open source project, since at the end of the day, the ones who benefit the most from these new features and renewed competition in the browser space are the users."

Chrome's Influence

And Chrome has indeed been influential. Google takes credit for renewed focus in the browser market on benchmarks and speed. That's arguable; Web browser power-users have always wanted the fastest code.

Chrome has strongly influenced Firefox development. In a statement on her blog, Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation, said a year ago that Chrome validated Mozilla's central philosophy that the browser is fundamentally important, not just a cog in the operating system.

Following Chrome's release, Firefox followed Chrome's lead in offering private browsing mode, aka "porn mode," where the browser can be set to stop tracking URL history, passwords, and caching Web pages. Private browsing was pioneered, not by Chrome, but by the earlier Safari browser in 2005, and Internet Explorer also offers it.

Another Chrome feature copied by Firefox: Chrome offers application windows, where individual copies of the browser can be locked to specific Web pages and applications, and behave more like desktop apps. After Chrome came out with that feature, Firefox pushed a project off the back burner that does the same thing, called Prism, and it's now available as either a standalone application or a browser extension. Safari also offers application windows through a third-party add-on.

Yet another Firefox feature that looks like Chrome: When Firefox crashes with multiple tabs open, it offers you a choice of which particular tabs to re-open, which is similar to Chrome's method of treating individual tabs as separate process. That behavior is new to Firefox 3.5, released after Chrome.

Long Road

Chrome still has a long road ahead, and quite a lot of potential. It's filling in many of the significant holes in its capabilities, and knocking down barriers to adoption. The open beta released last year didn't even have a bookmark manager; the current version has that. As my colleague Serdar Yegulalp reports, version 2.0 is now available, version 3.0 is on its way, and Chrome just keeps getting better and better. Chrome now supports browser extensions, the lack of which was another barrier to adoption, and it's working hard on getting out Mac and Linux versions.

So is Google Chrome a success? Not if you measure it against initial expectations in places like TechCrunch and TechDirt. It's far from a Microsoft-killer; it hasn't even caused Microsoft to break a sweat. And it's been a disappointment to Mac and Linux users, who are still waiting to see versions of the software.

On the other hand, measured on its own terms, Chrome is a hit. It's great software, it's been influential in shaping browser evolution, and it has a devoted user base.

While Chrome has fallen far short of fulfilling its potential, it's still early days. Don't count Chrome out.

For Further Reading:

Review: Google Chrome Mostly Glitters

Google Chrome Gets Faster, Learns HTML 5

Google Chrome OS: Web Platform To Rule Them All

Google Chrome Bookmark Sync Coming