Posts Tagged ‘browserwars’

Google today refreshed the stable version of Chrome and updated it to version 14. There are plenty of security patches, but the big news is the addition of the native client, short NaCl, which brings an interface to dock traditional desktop applications to Chrome.

As the browser strategy of Microsoft, Mozilla and Google unfolds, we are noticing a seismic shift in the browser landscape. Google is claiming a bigger slice of the market every month, which gives the company greater control of web trends. A near perfect browser update model is supporting Chrome’s success, while Microsoft and Mozilla are struggling with a fragmented platform that could turn into a  nightmare to support. Especially Mozilla needs to figure out how to deal with requests for a stable platform model.

This one almost slipped by unnoticed: Google posted the 100,000th revision of Chrome code last week. Build 100,000 was posted on September 7. Since then, Chrome has received 816 new revisions.

Google’s Chrome browser is picking up the pace after a slight market share growth slowdown in August. Chrome has cracked the 25% mark for the first time this weekend, according to StatCounter. Firefox share is declining five times faster than IE share.

Google has added a few more features to Chrome recently. One of them is a self-crash mode, if the browser finds that it can’t gracefully shut down.

CTPI Benchmark & Analysis – There is no other mainstream software category that evolves as fast as the web browser. Recent announcements by Mozilla to upgrade its JavaScript and graphics engine were reason enough for us to compare the developer versions of upcoming IE10, Firefox 9, Chromium 15, Opera 12 and Safari 5.1. And boy, were we surprised!

It almost sounds as if Microsoft is joining Apple in its effort to strangle Flash: Microsoft says that HTML5 is powerful enough to enable a browser future without plug-ins.

While Google’s Chrome posted its 34th consecutive month of market share growth for August, the browser also posted its lowest growth rate since November 2008. Just a hiccup or a first sign that it will get tougher for Google to acquire market share from its rivals.

There is more room in JavaScript to get faster. The most recent nightly builds include Mozilla’s Firefox 9 nightly builds include support for type inference, which accelerates Firefox in JavaScript benchmarks by up to 32%.

Google and Microsoft are heavily pushing the creation of HTML5 games for Chrome as well as IE9 and IE10. However, the opportunity is much greater for Mozilla, which isn’t nearly as active in this space as its rivals.

Google confirmed the existence of a fraudulent *.google.com certificate, which may have been used by the Iranian government to monitor Gmail for the past five weeks. Google, Mozilla and Microsoft have reacted and said that the certificate has been removed from browsers. Some browser users may have to manually update their software.

We are not quite sure whether Mozilla is setting itself up for self-destruction. We have witnessed a strange string of communication breakdowns and misunderstandings within Mozilla that indicate an increasingly complicated organizational structure that may be almost impossible to control. Does Mozilla need tighter control and new rules to protect itself from running into obvious obstacles over and over again?