Google Slaps Microsoft – Microsoft Slaps Google – What?

Posted on 10. Oct, 2009 by Simon Banks in Tech Industry News

In an article by ChannelWeb entitled “Microsoft Office 2010: A Necessary Slap At Google” sounds like a cat fight in a school yard. Microsoft isn’t slapping anybody. What they are trying to do is not loose face in the new world of “Cloud Computing“.

Lets keep war out of this and keep technical issues to technical issues. I realize that the modern day media must try to make everything sound dramatic or disastrous just to keep readers interested because there is so much information on the web; however, there are those who would just like the facts once in a while without all of the phony huupla.

Microsoft Browser IE

Microsoft has not been in a supremacy race with anyone for years. They have been playing catch up with technology because in the beginning they tried to force control of the entire Internet market and refused to open their source code so that others could help them make a better product. Let’s face it – if the IE browser was such a great browser they wouldn’t have lost market share to Firefox, Opera and now Google. IE is slow, invasive, resource intensive and years behind the competition. The only reason that it is maintaining the market share that it still has is because many people don’t know how to switch.

Enter – Google Chrome Browser

The “Chrome Browser” is a stand alone browser and an add-on to Microsoft IE (for those who want a better browser). But is Chrome really a browser?

What is a Browser?

Wikipedia describes a browser as: “A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content.^[1] Hyperlinks present in resources enable users to easily navigate their browsers to related resources.”

For the most part that may not help you. Simply put, it is a graphical interface between the user (user computer) and the Internet. It allows you to interact with information and look up things such as articles, pictures, videos, etc… in an easy, single application.

In that respect – then Chrome is indeed a web browser. However, it is also much more. It is the new web applications tool that allows you to customize it in ways that previously were not available.

Web Application Interface

With today’s interest in YouTube™, MySpace™, Facebook™ and Twitter™ (plus many others) and the advancement of widgets – the new Chrome Application Browser allows you to add your favorite applications, RSS feeds and even customize your look and layout – all the while giving you the opportunity to have higher security features and lightning speed.

In our testing of the “web application tool”, Google created a browser that seems to be based on the very concept that made Google famous in the first place – Simplicity! It is basically a bare-boned web browser when unpacked – just like Google Search Engine. A simple page without all the accessories. You get to build out the accessories as you see fit.

What about “Firefox”?

Firefox by Mozilla has been on the cutting edge of web browser development for years. It was one of the first browsers that supported CSS2 & then CSS3, XML standards and some of the highest security ratings in the industry. While Microsoft IE was getting hacked into on a constant basis, Firefox users could rest comfortably. It wasn’t long that Firefox started drawing away much of the IE customer base. It has been Firefox that has given Microsoft IE browser the run for their money – not Google.

Now with Google Chrome on the scene – Microsoft will inevitably loose even more market share to open source solutions and better programming.

Try:
Google Chrome
Firefox Browser

Coming up next: CIDA News will be looking into the new technological wave of “Cloud Computer” and see how it will change the face of computer technology and how we use the Internet.

Related Articles:
Microsoft to offer rival browsers alongside Internet Explorer – The Tech Herald
How Firefox won its market share – Computer Weekly.com