Apple went to war head on and failed. Linux tried “free” but their efforts were unfocused and uncoordinated.

Google took a different tactic. It’s seeded a revolution by handing out weapons of mass destruction to everyday people.

Rather than fight the war itself, Google took the role of “arms dealer” and started giving away weapons of mass destruction for free.

Those weapons?

Gmail, Google Docs, Google Analytics, Google Maps, Adwords and Adsense, Google Voice, Android, the Chrome browser, the Chrome OS…and others.

When you think about it this way…Google isn’t fighting anyone…and Microsoft is literally fighting everyone…very clever.

I never count Microsoft out, but one has to wonder how can they compete when everyday people have such powerful alternatives…or should I say weapons?

Post from: The Chrome Voice "The Chrome Voice" is your source for news and information about the Google Chrome browser.

Google: Arms Dealing in Weapons of Mass Destruction

Reports are coming in that Chrome usage dropped since last week. 

Gregg Keizer writes in Computerworld that users who originally abandoned IE and Firefox are now returning citing Network Applications report that of the 40,000 sites it tracks, this week showed Chrome’s share to be 0.77% of visitors versus last week’s number of 0.85%.

This means 0.08% less Chrome browser visits to the 40k sites.

Doesn’t sound like much to me, but I don’t discount the report. Clearly a huge number of people got excited about Chrome when it first came out and now that they’ve tried it, 10% decided to go back to IE or Firefox.

Another way to look at it is that 90% of the people who tried it during the previous week are still using it now.

It will be interesting to watch the market share as the weeks progress. 

Gregg’s full article is here.

Post from: The Chrome Voice "The Chrome Voice" is your source for news and information about the Google Chrome browser.

Chrome Usage: Did 90% of Last Week’s “tire kickers” come back for more?

During the press conference, the question came up about whether the G1 would use Chrome and the answer came back, “Yes, call it Chrome Lite”. 

There are numerous stories about the press conference which took place in NYC at 10:30am eastern time. 

Engadget.com seems to have one of the better sets of coverage with multiple reports and great pictures.

Post from: The Chrome Voice "The Chrome Voice" is your source for news and information about the Google Chrome browser.

“Chrome Lite” On T Mobile’s Android Phone

Highlights include:

• Google to support add-ons like Firefox and Greasemonkey scripts (the founder of GreaseMonkey now works on the  Chrome team).
• A discussion of developer discontent on the lack of standards for browsers.
• Whether or not browsers have become more important than the OS when writing applications.
• Plenty of helpings of “do no evil” from Google when asked about their goals for Chrome.

See Darryl K. Taft’s full article here.

Post from: The Chrome Voice "The Chrome Voice" is your source for news and information about the Google Chrome browser.

Web 2.0 Expo reveals more Chrome Goodness

“Seriously…we didn’t disassemble Vista….”

In his special report for ZDNet, Stephen Shankland, writes that even though comments in Chromium (open source code for Chrome) indicate otherwise, Google denies disassembling Window’s Vista to get the “Data Execution Prevention” security code to work in Chrome.

That’s good news for Google, because had they indeed followed their own suggestion to disassemble Vista’s kernal32.dll file to understand how the security code works, they would have been in violation of Vista’s EULA.

Google says “We did not disassemble this code” in one statement, but then shows their support for using the technique saying “Disassembling is a common and accepted practice in software development, frequently used to make sure software features are compatible with other software programs or operating systems”.

To me it sounds like someone did disassemble the code and put the comment in Chromium before the Google legal and PR team knew it.

The net result is “who cares”. I doubt there was evil intent behind it and besides, I’m guessing Microsoft has probably done the same once or twice in it’s 30 year history. I bet the same goes for Mozilla developers too.

To see Stephen Shankland’s full report, go here.

Post from: The Chrome Voice "The Chrome Voice" is your source for news and information about the Google Chrome browser.

Chrome Browser Team Did Not Disassemble Microsoft Vista