A Google engineer decreased the latency with which the Omnibox (search bar) autocompleted a URL. I recently heard a user-hostile story demonstrating the misalignment between Chrome users and Google's business priorities. However, user and company interests have become misaligned as Google has grown. When Chrome first launched, there was real alignment between web users and Google: with a better, more powerful, more consistent web experience there would be more web users and more Google searches. With this in mind, Google built Chrome because Google needed more users on the web. Google was attempting to drive web usage by moving traditionally desktop applications to the web before investing in a web browser. After all, Google pays Apple $15B a year for just 20% of the market.īut let's look historically: Google launched Google Docs (2006) before Chrome (2008). While Chromium browsers have some flexibility, like choosing privacy respecting search engines, all Chromium browsers use the same JavaScript engine, and most use similar developer tools and extension APIs Tier 2 - The CompetitionĬhrome is worth around $50B per year to Google simply by driving search traffic. Chromium is the open-source browser project that powers Google Chrome, but Microsoft Edge and other significant browsers also use Chromium. The Google web crawler (Googlebot) can more easily ingest all Chrome-compatible websites.Ĭynically, Chrome's dominance has allowed Google to push search optimizing technologies like AMP that go against open web standards.Īt this point, it's important to remember that Chromium is different than Chrome. And this standardization makes it easier to search the web.
Through Chrome, Google is the gatekeeper of modern web standards: Chrome's adoption of a web standard is the most important step to widespread adoption. Testing in other browsers is often an afterthought.Ĭritically, Chrome's adoption has furthered the standardization of the web. These tools also perpetuate Chrome's dominance because developers make websites that work best in Chrome. Developers have since become very familiar with Chrome developer tools, and there is a growing ecosystem of Chrome developer tool extensions (React, Lighthouse, etc.) These tools allow developers to build, test, and fix websites quickly. Because of Chrome's dominant market share, developers focus on Chrome compatibility first. Developers are an important part of Chrome's network effects.
0 kommentar(er)
