Chrome Frame, which has just entered beta, is an Internet Explorer plug-in supporting HTML and JavaScript, among other technologies or tags. Google is trying to redefine Internet Explorer on terms that suit its product and platform objectives. It’s Google’s most ambitious drive into Microsoft controlled territory ever, even more than desktop search, Exchange email sync or toolbar products/services.
For Microsoft, Chrome Frame and forthcoming Google Wave are a looming crisis of IE’s character, as expressed in end-user features and the browser’s appeal — or lack thereof — to developers. By Framing Internet Explorer, Google seizes control of the end user experience away from Microsoft. If Google can succeed widely distributing Frame, the easy step is next: Moving those same users to Chrome.
This could be a total game changer for the browser war and ecosystem as we know it. Should Google succeed moving end users en masse from Framed IE to Chrome, Firefox growth likely would stall and over time recede (since most users select to use Firefox since Internet Explorer doesn’t meet their expectations in the first place). Looked at that way, Chrome Frame poses potentially more risk to Firefox than IE. Remember, Mozilla is dependent on Google paid search revenue through the browser Google search box.
And even though Internet Explorer still stands as the dominant internet browser till these days, they would have stagnanted and left the world to live with IE6 if not for competitions from Firefox, Opera and Safari. I’m sure there will be lots of people that would love to see IE collapse then to see it prosper since it’s such a buggy, proprietarily protected platform, uses its own non-web-standard IE rendering enigne and that disturbing “you must have it to run windows” mindset and implementation.
Carly says
Great article – i agree that IE needs to bring something out that will help boost its appeal – i use Firefox so it would be interesting to see what Chrome Frame can really do.