Barry Collins just asked me to take a read over his “Mozilla founder is right: Firefox has lost it” blog, and while I’ve pressed the Publish button I absolutely disagree with his views.
It takes 30 seconds to fire up the browser, Barry says. Well perhaps it does, but it’s still much faster than Internet Explorer, and in general my homepages – pcpro.co.uk and google.co.uk – are ready and waiting for me within ten seconds.
Of course there are irritations – every piece of software I’ve ever used has been irritating – but if Barry’s worried about the grey finish then add a theme. And maybe get a life while you’re at it. (Only kidding Barry, honest!)
And let’s concentrate on the plus points. While Google has a few Add-ins, it’s absolutely nothing compared to the universe of extras available for Firefox. Plus, Mozilla is a company that actually cares about its users’ privacy; Google rather less so.
So why is Google Chrome closing the gap in terms of market share? In part because it is a good product, in that it’s so damn fast, but also because Google is spending cash on promoting it.
Download Skype and you have to untick two boxes or Chrome will both be downloaded and become your default browser. Likewise, visit the Google homepage over the course of a week and at some point you’ll see a message suggesting you download Chrome. Or type “web browser” into Google itself and guess what comes top of the sponsored links?
Viewed in this context, shouldn’t Chrome be doing just a little better than 14% market share?
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