News 

Google launches shock web browser

"We are not building a browser." Google chief executive Eric Schmidt in 2004.

"What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build." Eric Schmidt, 2008.

That's right, Google has finally unveiled the browser it hasn't been working on for the last four years. And the company's explanation for this virgin birth? "It just happened to migrate from being false to being true," according to Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder. Glad they've cleared that up. Reaction on the forums was mixed.

"So we've got Firefox, Safari, Opera and now Chrome, plus umpteen others," laments rjp2000 who must have a nightmare choosing which cereal to buy. "Too many browsers already, and do we really need another one? Are they all going to 100% compatible? I doubt it."

Big_D was more receptive to Google's overtures - and also had a thoughtful analogy to hand, which was nice.

"It doesn't matter how many browsers they are, as long as they are standards compliant... It is like car manufacturers, why aren't we all driving around in a Ford Ka? In the end, all cars can drive on the same roads and have much the same control standards. The same is, slowly, true of browsers. IE7 only really likes Microsoft roads, the rest like standard roads and have problems when they need to negotiate Microsoft roads."

Stirring stuff, but Colsmith was feeling suspicious: "I wonder what extra information Google can harvest about us using this little baby?"

Quite a lot as it turns out. But don't worry it keeps saying it's not going to doing anything sneeky with it.

Google: Firefox and IE are not good enough

<

ADVERTISEMENT

Poor Mozilla. Just a week ago it was lighting fine Cuban cigars with $20 notes after securing three years' worth of funding from Google, and this week it's watching old episodes of Dad's Army and shouting at its developers to buy war bonds and plant their own vegetables, after its biggest benefactor started arming up.

"If Google ever decided to pull the plug on them I think Mozilla would go down. In fact Google practically owns them," says TimoGunt, ever the optimist.

However, pcernie was very much in the doomed browser's camp: "I'd like to see FF survive no matter what, and I'm wondering if Chrome will pick up any disgruntled IE users who are afraid of installing FF, but trust Google after using Gmail and Earth."

It was left to geo139 play the peacekeeper Chamberlain:

"Firefox/chrome merger?"

And manny_the_second to blow it out of the water: "I think that if Google were interested in Mozilla, they would have bought them long ago. Now that they have released Chrome, I think a buy out or merger is out of the question.

Google have been forced into this by Internet Explorer, but it is naive to think that Firefox won't suffer as a result."

The Vista fightback begins

And we finish with Microsoft, which this week began its $300m campaign to win over the hearts and minds of Vista philistines with an advert that brilliantly failed to mention Vista even once. Shoes, yes. Circuses, yes. Vista, nope. But then people like those things. If we were Microsoft, we'd ask for our money back and go with this from earlybomblight.

"Here's an alternative, cheaper and slightly less embarrassing Vista ad: Windows Vista. Not as bad as you might think."

Or alternatively gavomatic57, who has his own... erm... methods.

"What they need to do is take out all the forum FUD-spreaders - the ones who have either never used it or haven't since Beta 2! Employing trained snipers would be going a bit far however."

What about untrained ones? Brumsta was equally unimpressed.

"Stupid and irrelevant advert. Moist OS? They would be better off donating $299m to worthy causes and spending $1m telling people they did so. Idiots."

Well it made us laugh, but then we're tech journalists and easily amused. Speaking of which we're off to the pub to flick peanuts at each other and blame it on the innocent guy at the bar.

Have a good weekend, see you Monday.