After the European commission decision to force Microsoft to actively offer web users a choice of different browsers (rather than simply the implicit potential to search for, download, and install one through IE), it seems Google are having a pretty decent week as far as their browser is concerned, and with rather handy timing have just launched a new beta version with some nice new features. (Head over to Youtube for a quick demonstration of the main additions and tweaks).
While the new release is nothing major (basically some added privacy controls, added control over cookies and java plug-ins for individual sites and a neat translation service), it does come at a time when Chrome's market share is showing continued progress at eating away at Mozilla and IE's users (both shares of the market continued to fall incrementally, but consistently, over the past three months).
At the moment however the relative numbers involved hardly indicate a collossal swing away from the previous status quo (IE still has almost two-thirds market share, Firefox just under one quarter, and Chrome around one-twentieth) - but it seems undeniable that in the next year or two these imbalances will even out drastically.
Indeed it might not even be too fanciful to imagine that Chrome could one day dominate the browser market in the same way that IE did for years. Regardless of what happens though, the reason I indulge in this hypothetical speculation is not to be alarmist but to highlight the fact that, even though I'm a happy Chrome user myself, I'd sooner switch to another browser than see Chrome displace IE as market dominator (or any other competitor for that matter - I only focus on Chrome because at present it is the only one which could maybe one day achieve this, as things stand right now).
What the EC ruling mentioned above recognises (and the reason I fully support it) is not that IE is somehow a mandatory inferior product and hence must be punished - but that the browser market will on the whole benefit from an extension of diversity and a more evenly divided playing field. Not just for the sake of greater innovation, but also even more immediately in order to reduce the security risks from malware (it's just far too easy for hackers to target vastly significant numbers of users simply due to IE's market dominance).
In fact the more one thinks about it, there is pretty much no reason to feel that this greater diversity is a bad thing. Maybe governments will find it trickier to regulate over legal issues now that they'd need the co-operation of more browsers than before, but one surely envisages that the creation of a universal body with representatives from each company could easily solve this issue. Otherwise, with regard to negatives, I'm stumped - if you can think of any reason why this might be a flawed decision please do share your thoughts below (please don't say it makes it tricky for developers though - those guys and girls are learning new stuff all the time anyway; it's part of the job!), but until then I'm very firmly in support of this major ruling from the EC.
Dejan Levi
