Chrome Helping Other Browsers Out, Says Opera CEO

Pablo Martinez-Almeida writes "Opera CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner confirms that new entrants in the browser market are raising awareness on the mainstream Internet community about the availability of alternatives to the ubiquitous Internet Explorer. 'How has the emergence of WebKit and Chrome changed the market for you? JvT: The effect of Chrome so far has been 20 percent more downloads every day. It's fairly logical when you think about it, because the biggest hurdle we have is all those people that don't realize there's an alternative in the market. Now, with the launch of Chrome there's focus on the choice of browsers in the market.'

Comments

Chrome for me?

[Viol8]

"How has the emergence of WebKit and Chrome changed the market for you"

When they can be bothered to release a linux version let me know then I might be able to give answer.

Re:Chrome for me?

[agrounds]

Demands to have something ported for us usually come from novice users who are not able to port software themselves, and are not aware of the extent to which software is ported by others.

I think labeling users that don't code at that level as 'novice' is disingenuous at best. I have used *nix systems for well over 10 years in my daily life and in my job and have nothing more than a basic understanding of C because the bulk of my work (network engineer) revolves around PERL, AWK, and expect with a healthy dose of Oracle and MySQL. Does that make me a novice user? No, I don't believe so. Users come in all shapes and sizes, and everyone's individual strengths reinforce the community as a whole.

A proper and well-documented OS should be able to support any user that wants to use it without an excessively steep learning curve. Usability of a well-designed tool should never require intimate knowledge of how the tool is constructed.

Re:Chrome for me?

[not already in use]

First of all, there is no archaic tool chain.

This is highly subjective. I realize in the *nix world, it is a badge of honor to use command line development tools. Of course, there are people who don't feel the need to lay claim to arbitrary feats, and just want the best tool for the job. The GNU toolchain is old, has seen little innovation, and has not kept up pace with Microsoft and Apple facilities. It is stagnant, except in the eyes of those who take pride in using such archaic and user-unfriendly tools. What's more, it's common to be berated for wanting something more modern, usually taking flak for being a novice or some other unsubstantiated claims regarding ability.

Re:Chrome for me?

[TheRaven64]

The GNU toolchain is old, has seen little innovation, and has not kept up pace with Microsoft and Apple facilities

You realise that Apple currently uses the GNU compiler? They use their own linker, which is more primitive than the GNU one (Mach-O is, in many ways, much less nice to work with than ELF). They use xcodebuild rather than make, which takes input files that are easier to generate from XCode but almost impossible to hand-edit and very difficult to edit with anything other than XCode, but they also support using GNU Make for building.

Or are you confusing the toolchain with the IDE? Most modern IDEs, including Visual Studio and XCode, drive a command-line toolchain in the background. Whether you use the GNU toolchain from a command line or from an IDE is your choice. The same is true when you use the Microsoft toolchain, although since it was impossible to get it without buying their IDE until a few years ago, most people used it via the IDE.

Re:Chrome for me?

[Anonymous Coward]

The GNU toolchain is old, has seen little innovation, and has not kept up pace with Microsoft and Apple facilities

You realise that Apple currently uses the GNU compiler?

You realize Apple is slowly getting rid of it? The current XCode (3.1) has LLVM as an optional code-generation backend using GCC as a frontend, and Apple is one of the primary developers of the LLVM Clang project, which will replace the GCC frontend.

I think we're already there

[Dan East]

I think we're already to the point where many people are aware they have a choice of web browsers. I was watching the news the other night (obviously not MSNBC), and they had a large touch-screen display running a web-browser with multiple tabs - Firefox. They were using it to display charts and other information.

Also, various family members are aware of Firefox, but they have no idea what "chrome" is. So I'm not sure how Chrome is somehow more noticeable to the mainstream, especially since it doesn't add any of the bells-and-whistles type features that typical people notice (security and performance isn't exactly exciting to the average joe).

Re:I think we're already there

[mdm-adph]

Ah, yes -- I have a few (not many) family members and older co-workers aware of "FoxFire," too.

Yes, that's what it's always called, an no, no matter how many times I correct them it's always "FoxFire."

Re:I think we're already there

[betterunixthanunix]

The majority of people do not fully understand what Firefox is. There reason IE remains so popular is that most home computer users think their computer is just another appliance, and they want it to work out of the box like a VCR. So they just start it up for the first time, click "start," see something labelled "internet" and just use it, never even realizing what they are using or what they are doing. It has nothing to do with the technical merits of the web browser, it has to do with people who are not interested in computing beyond the on/off switch.

Re:I think we're already there

[Anonymous Coward]

And to be honest you can't realy blame them. Just like with cars ( an analogy not always fitting to the computer world) you expect it to run when you buy it and never really care about the details ,important as they might be.

How many people know how extremely important tyres are to the safety of a car? A goog tyre can save you ALLOT of meters when braking in the rain. But people just don't care. Except the few that do like us.

Re:I think we're already there

[AmberBlackCat]

I think it's more than that. A big problem for Firefox is the people click on the big blue E and it actually works fine. So they don't have any obvious reason to look further.

A big problem for Opera users is the people who claim there should be a choice of browsers usually mean there should be a choice between IE, Firefox, and maybe Safari. I've had sites work fine with Opera and then one day they just stop working because the webmaster decides to suddenly start checking user agent strings.

So a site that works fine on Tuesday is telling me my browser is incompatible on Wednesday, and the only thing I can do is change the user agent string, which isn't going to help the makers of the alternative browser at all.

Web developers care, normal people don't

[agentultra]

There has been choice for years that many people have been aware of.

Most people who still use IE just don't care for the other choices.

Web developers care more than anyone. People who only go on the Internet to watch the odd youtube video and check their hotmail care the least.

Re:Web developers care, normal people don't

[Shados]

You'd be surprised. I work for a fairly large company (several thousand employees). People at the head office have control on their machines. A large portion of them (many who barely know how to turn on their computer) downloaded and use Firefox, and many even Chrome!

But for the people in the outlets... their computers are locked down (very...locked down. For good reasons: if it breaks, someone needs to take a trip from the headoffice, thats time consuming and expensive), old, and purely controlled by the network administrators. Pushing IE is easy, though there are some machines on Win2k out there, so IE7 and above are no go. Pushing Firefox or others would be more difficult, for little gain (from a business perspective), even if users want it.

The consequence in the end is: I have to make our -internal- apps work in IE6/7, and only those. Not a good thing.

Re:Web developers care, normal people don't

[biscuitlover]

There's an element of truth in that, but you can't underestimate the power of Chinese whispers... With IE6 and IE7 Microsoft caused so much resentment amongst web developers (or the ones who built pages properly at any rate) that lots of people began some kind of crusade to get everyone they knew using a different browser.

As a web developer I've ended up doing the same. So, while the percentage of internet users who are also web developers might be pretty minimal, IE's broken standards created so many evangelists for the alternatives that the ripples have started to reach pretty far and wide...

..Or am I just being wildly optimistic?

Re:story title edit:

[SanityInAnarchy]

And one way to ensure the standards are being followed tightly is to have a number of alternative browsers.

Re:Opera Mozilla

[residieu]

I really don't understand the rabid hatred of seeing ANY ads that some people have. I'll block flash ads or ads with animation if they get too distracting, but usually I just don't see them.

IE will remain on top as long as Windows is top

[theaveng]

>>>all those people that don't realize there's an alternative in the market.

Yeah. So? Even when Netscape had 90% dominance, most people still chose Internet Exploder, thereby gradually erasing Netscape from existence. I don't think any browser's ever going to beat IE's advantage of being "there" on the desktop.

Re:IE will remain on top as long as Windows is top

[The Raven]

For a time, IE was also better. It was much faster, rendered better, and came bundled... who wouldn't use it?

There's nothing wrong with a browser taking tons of marketshare when it's the better product, and for a while Netscape abandoned their browser while they tried to be all enterprisey... Netscape Mail server, Netscape this, Netscape that, all while their browser wasn't being updated and fell behind IE. Then, IE proceeded to languish at version 6, and Mozilla, via Firefox, finally started making inroads.

The entire browser market has a strong 'you snooze, you lose' component to it. Microsoft did employ dirty tricks to get IE popular fast, but if Netscape hadn't fallen asleep at the switch, Microsoft still wouldn't have succeeded in dominating the market.

Re:IE will remain on top as long as Windows is top

[Anonymous Coward]

When Netscape dominated, the web was mostly static web pages with some simple JavaScript. Most people had very slow Internet connections and were new to the web, and most people bought software in a box instead of downloading it.

There will always be people who think Internet equals the blue e, but the people who spend half their day with their Facebook page, blogging and twittering might try out the alternatives if they think it will make their browsing time better.

Still, it's true that IE has a huge advantage by being the only browser bundled with every Windows box.