If you want to get ahead, get a Browser

In its quest to own the whole internet*, Google releases its own browser, Chrome. To add more to the plethora of comment on the Browsermania would be a waste - just go here for more reading than is healthy....

What you will hear less of is the "why".

Google, like every major player before it, has worked out that the browser is the pivotal link between user and applications. Control that and a whole host of information about the user becomes visible, and a whole host of your services can be locked in (and competitors locked out). If you are keen on the Cloud, it helps if you have a little bit of it on every client.

Hence Microsof'ts attempt to control the browser in Web 1.0 by fair means or foul, hence the anti trust interest and so on.

Question is why now, they could have done this before. Our hypothesis is that its only now that its becoming clear that Google generation search is tailing off as a market, and if Ads and Clouds are the way to go the last thing you want is other pesky people:

(i) Putting functions on browsers to obfuscate sending their details to the Googledome and (horrors) blocking the Ads

(ii) Controlling the web portal into your Cloud (hey, you, get off of my Cloud)

And it puts a great big Googletank on the Microlawns - bonus!

Prediction - you will be bribed with all sorts of Googlecandy if you use the Google browser, the others will all cry "foul", and we will be back in the Anti Trust courts again.

Plus ca Change

(Now to be fair, others believe this is more an attempt by Google to stimulate the browser market into building next generation browsers, rather than dominate it. This may be so, but the benefits of domination are so huge that it is - in our view - unlikely that Google hasn't considered this option)

*Is Google the Henry Ford of this communication revolution?