Online Marketing, Ireland

This week saw the launch of Google’s new browser, Google Chrome. Google’s history of product development and product launches has not always covered the $140Bn company in glory. A browse through Google’s product offering reads more like a potted history of the commercial internet than a product portfolio. However, Google Chrome is, in my opinion, completely different. This really is the big one.

Emer Lawn at Interactive Return has covered some of the features and functionality of the new browser. This post looks at the business significance of Google’s latest contribution to the online world.

Mozilla Firefox proved the case that a small, relatively unknown, unconnected company can take a big slice out of, what looked like, Microsoft’s hegemony of the browser market. To date, most commentators seem to feel that Firefox will be most adversely effected by the arrival of Chrome. I disagree. Internet Explorer’s share of the market is about to be decimated.

Chrome is the interface that will draw together Google’s disparate online applications including Search, Docs (The Microsoft Office killer), Gmail and everything else, and piece them together into a brave new, Google-managed, online environment. Google’s applications have already made significant in-roads into schools, colleges and universities. In a few years time Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer will seem more and more foreign to each new batch of graduates who have grown up on Google’s “free”, online, open-source applications.

Web stats for the Interactive Return website show that 4 days post-launch of Chrome, 1% of visitors to the Interactive Return website are using Chrome. Over at Search Engine land, Barry Schwartz is reporting 10% Chrome usage! I suspect the folks in Redmond havn’t been sleeping much this week.