Google pushing users away from IE?

Google has taken the aggressive step of advising some of the people using its Gmail webmail to use Chrome or Firefox rather than Internet Explorer.

When users log into their Gmail using Internet Explorer a red text link appears at the top right of the page saying ‘get faster Google Mail.’

If you click on the link then you are taken through to a Google answers page that suggests that you should use a faster browser.

The suggestions it makes are Google’s own Chrome browser or Firefox 3.0.

We suggest you upgrade

“Browsers are getting faster and better at running web applications like Google Mail that use browser technology to its limits. In order to get the best Google Mail experience possible, we suggest that you upgrade your browser to one of the fastest Google Mail supported browsers that work on Windows,” reads the text.

There is a proviso that IE8 is being worked on ‘Note: A faster version of Internet Explorer, IE8, is in development and available in a beta release.’

Although not all users appear to be affected in our early investigation, at first glance it is a particularly aggressive approach from Google.

To actively push two browsers over the currently dominant Internet Explorer is far from the normal Google softly, softly approach – especially in a week where Internet Explorer has been beset by news of a major security problem.

It seems, however, that Google is only pushing users to the other browsers if they are currently using Internet Explorer 7. Those that are using Internet Explorer 6 are told to upgrade to either Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer 7 for a faster Google service.

Whether this is a silly overview on Google’s part or an active push away from Internet Explorer by the search kings remains to be seen.

What is for sure, is that Google is sending out mixed messages to its users, depending on what version of browser they are using.

Google Chrome Browser to support customization

Google has launched an effort to make it possible for developers to offer ad-blocking and other extensions for Chrome, a move that would give the Google Web browser the same level of customization as Mozilla Firefox.

The ability to install third-party applications that add capabilities chosen by users, but not provided by Mozilla, is a key reason for the open source browser’s popularity. Google is apparently borrowing from that playbook in proposing the extension system to Chromium, the open source project behind the development of Chrome.

Google’s proposal was introduced over the weekend in a blog post from Aaron Boodman, a Google programmer working on Chrome. The design document outlines areas that would have to be addressed, such as application programming interfaces to connect extensions to the Chrome engine.

Under the heading “use cases,” Google lists some types of extensions that the company would like to support in Chrome, such as ad and flash blockers. Google makes its money from selling Web advertising but has decided not to ignore two of the most popular Firefox extensions. Other third-party apps Google says it would support include bookmarking/navigation tools, download helpers, and privacy and parental controls.

Having an add-on system from Chrome tops users’ wish list. “If I can’t even add a third-party extension, this browser won’t stay long on my computer,” one person wrote on the Chromium forum.

Google did not set a timetable for releasing an extension system for Chrome, but the design documentation for Chromium developers indicates the search engine has already started to work on the technology.

Google designed Chrome to be lightweight and fast, to have a minimalist user interface, and to resist crashing under have JavaScript demands of Web applications. While a reviewer for InformationWeek believes Google has largely met its goal, not having an extension system gives rival Firefox the upper hand. Microsoft also doesn’t provide an open extension system for Internet Explorer.

Extensions give users more choices in customizing the browser to meet their needs, while relieving the browser maker from having to add a lot of features that can hinder performance. Internet Explorer accounts for more than 70% of the browser market, followed by Firefox with almost 20%. Chrome, which is in beta, has less than 1%.

Chrome fades as users return to IE, Firefox

Chrome’s share of the browser market is fading as users who abandoned Internet Explorer and Firefox start to return, an Internet measurement company said today.

At the end of its third week of availability, Google Inc.’s Chrome accounted for 0.77% of the browsers that visited the 40,000 sites tracked by Net Applications, down from a 0.85% share the week before.

“The trend line on Chrome still has a slight downward angle, and these weekly numbers reflect that,” said Vince Vizzaccaro, Net Applications’ executive vice president of marketing. Although Chrome popped above 1% within hours of its release, the new browser now reaches that mark only in the middle of the night, U.S. time, Vizzaccaro added.

Chrome’s numbers, like those of Mozilla Corp.’s Firefox and Apple Inc.’s Safari, typically climb after work hours and then fall as work resumes the next day. Many businesses standardize on Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer (IE) and don’t allow employees to use alternate browsers.

IE and Firefox still showed share erosion compared to the period immediately before Chrome’s Sept. 2 debut, but both browsers regained users last week, Vizzaccaro said. IE picked up 0.24 percentage points last week, while Firefox regained 0.06 points. Both, however, remained down for the month, as was Opera Software ASA’s Opera and AOL LLC’s now-defunct Netscape.

Safari, the only browser to escape Chrome’s impact, was still on the plus side for September, ending last week up 0.45 percentage points before Chrome, although that was down from the prior week’s 0.68-point net gain.

Last week, Vizzaccaro said Safari’s immunity could be traced to the lack of Chrome competition. Although Google has promised a native Mac OS X edition, its browser is currently only available for Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Computerworld’s site metrics echoed Net Applications’ trend for Chrome. The percentage of visitors to Computerworld.com who used Google’s browser dropped to 4.01 points last week, down from 4.96 points.

Chrome’s slow slide may be because of Google’s low-key promotion, Vizzaccaro said. “The only marketing effort I’ve seen from Google is in sponsored links on search results for ‘browser’ or ‘browsers’ search terms,” he said. “On Google, Chrome is naturally the top sponsored link. On Yahoo, it was second. And on Windows Live, I couldn’t even find it in the first five pages of organic results.”

Week starting	Aug. 24	Aug. 31	Sept. 7	Sept. 15	Net Change
IE	72.39%	71.03%	71.24%	71.48%	-0.91%
Firefox	19.54%	19.78%	19.35%	19.42%	-0.13%
Safari	6.27%	6.67%	6.95%	6.73%	0.45%
Chrome	—–	0.67%	0.85%	0.77%	0.77%
Opera	0.74%	0.75%	0.70%	0.68%	-0.06%
Netscape	0.77%	0.83%	0.67%	0.66%	-0.11%

Mozilla CEO uncertain about future relationship with Google

Google was widely speculated to sacrifice Mozilla’s existence, which it supports quite extensively, in its quest to launch another assault at Microsoft. The simple fact that Google is now pursuing its own browser could leave Mozilla scratching its head. And quite apparently, Mozilla has not quite figured out how its relationship with Google will work out over the next few years.

But Mozilla CEO John Lily said that “it should come as no real surprise that Google has done something here – their business is the web, and they’ve got clear opinions on how things should be, and smart people thinking about how to make things better.” Lily believes that Chrome “will be a browser optimized for the things that they see as important, and it’ll be interesting to see how it evolves.”

The executive agrees that Google’s Chrome will have a competitive effect on Mozilla. “As much as anything else, it’ll mean there’s another interesting browser that users can choose,” he wrote in a blog post. “With IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc — there’s been competition for a while now, and this increases that. So it means that more than ever, we need to build software that people care about and love. Firefox is good now, and will keep on getting better.”

That being said, Lily noted that” Mozilla and Google have always been different organizations, with different missions, reasons for existing, and ways of doing things.” While they are tied together in certain collaborative efforts such as security features as well as a financial commitment from Google until 2011, the executive hinted that the future relationship between the two organizations is not ironed out yet. “It’ll be interesting to see what happens over the coming months and years. I personally think Firefox 3 is an incredibly great browser – the best anywhere – and we’re seeing millions of people start using it every month,” he wrote in his blog

“It’s based on technology that shows incredible compatibility across the broad web – technology that’s been tweaked and improved over a period of years.”

Lily’s blog is carefully worded, but it surely seems that Google will be aiming to gain the upper hand in this relationship and at least ask Mozilla to adopt key features of Chrome features for Firefox. Mozilla could be caught between a rock and a hard place: Play with Google or compete against them and the mighty Microsoft? There is no need to answer this question immediately, as the first version of Chrome seems to be very rough around its edges and appears to be lacking key features that would let Google compete with Firefox 3 and IE8 in a much more serious way.

Firefox 3 and Safari 4 in browser speed race

Most of today’s web sites and web applications are built using the JavaScript scripting language. Some may say that a trend towards the fine-tuning of JavaScript interpreters in modern browsers was just a matter of time since any such optimization translates into performance gains. Mozilla recently launched the browser speed race with Firefox 3, which delivers more speed than any other previous Firefox version. Apple answered with Safari 4, claiming the browser’s JavaScript engine has been accelerated by 53%. Welcome to the browser speed race.

Safari 4 has just been seeded to the developers at Apple’s developer conference. The manufacturer claims that the software has a 53% faster JavaScript engine than the preceding and current version 3.1 (based on the SunSpider JavaScript Performance test conducted on iMac with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor at 2.8 GHz, with 2 GB of RAM and running under Mac OS X Snow Leopard.) Although Firefox 3 RC3 was the first to deliver significant JavaScript performance improvement, Apple apparently is exceeding those gains with Safari 4.

Apple uses a new and improved JavaScript interpreter code-named SquirrelFish, which is provided on an open-source basis from the WebKit project, the same organization that makes the open-source engine used by Safari to render web pages. According to the WebKit project, the SquirrelFish engine is 1.6 times faster than the JavaScript engine in Safari 3.1.

SquirrelFish does its magic by turning JavaScript script into so-called bytecodes, an optimized code much more suitable for run-time execution than natural language-based JavaScript commands, which are longer and more complicated to interpret – and therefore are slower.

Why JavaScript performance matters
Most today’s web applications and web 2.0 sites rely on the JavaScript scripting language originally created by current Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich while he was employed by Netscape. JavaScript acts as glue that connects a user interface rendered in a web browser with a database and programming logic running in a web server. The browser’s JavaScript engine is solely responsible for interpreting and executing JavaScript commands embedded in HTML code. As a result, a browser’s JavaScript engine performance is directly related to the performance and responsiveness of a web application, contributing to an improved user experience.

The fact that many applications grow in size and become more bloated with each release means that a browser that can run web applications faster and make user interfaces more responsive on any computer is actually a big deal. You don’t have to have any specific market forecasting talent to predict that this trend may be impacting browser market shares: Speed can directly translate into more usability for most of us. Clearly, JavaScript handling is on its way to become a powerful weapon in the browser market.

SpiderMonkey, SquirrelFish, Tamarin and more
Mozilla was the first to introduce significant speed gains with Firefox 3 beta 5 (the final version is expected to ship by mid-June). Firefox has its Gecko engine to render web pages, which is generally considered to be slightly slower than Safari’s WebKit – which is largely responsible for the “fastest browser in the world” status Safari enjoys. Firefox’ JavaScript implementation is based on Mozilla’s own and decade old SpiderMonkey technology, which many considered to be the fastest JavaScript interpreter until SquirrelFish came out.

Although in beta, Firefox 3 scored with many reviewers who are praising the browser’s performance improvements, with WSJ’s Walt Mossberg declaring the browser a “winner.” But now that the SquirrelFish/Safari combination appears to be offsetting the speed gains in Firefox 3 and may set a new benchmark, we can expect more direct competition between Mozilla and Apple. Mozilla has plans to expand SpiderMonkey with Adobe’s JavaScript engine called Tamarin, included in Flash 9, which has a so-called “tracing” feature designed to enable faster code execution. However, the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark claims that SquirrelFish is at least 1.9 times faster than Tamarin.

Mozilla plans to wedge Tamarin into Firefox and match the API’s of both technologies “There are areas in which SpiderMonkey is faster than Tamarin and areas where it’s not. We’re looking to build hybrids that are best-of-breed for both worlds and we’re going to pull those into the Firefox release when ready,” Mozilla co-founder Mike Shaver recently said.

Can IE8 compete?
The big variable in this game is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8, currently in beta 1 phase. IE8 is expected to deliver speed gains in JavaScript performance as well. However, Microsoft is facing a tough task. The fact that the software giant is often criticized for delivering bloated and inefficient software certainly doesn’t help. In our tests, the first beta of IE8 shows no noticeable speed gains in running web applications.

Quite the opposite is the case, actually. Websites and web applications run noticeably slower than in IE7. The whole browsing experience generally appears to be less responsive. Of course, IE8 is in an early development stage and you can bet Microsoft is going to tweak its performance. The only problem is that the software giant will have to work to raise the stakes in the browser race. If IE8 under-delivers, the market could respond with further market share erosion for IE. It is evident now that JavaScript engine performance has become a key metric in the newest race for the title of fastest browser.

The battle ahead is nicely summed by Mozilla co-founder Mike Shaver who said the following: “They [Apple] have dropped SquirrelFish in now and got a big speed up there. We’ve got more coming on our side. You’ll see this leapfrog pattern over and over. We’re not going to let anybody slack on that and the other browser vendors need to keep up, too.”

According to Net Applications, Firefox 3 captured almost one fifth (18.41%) of the browser market in May, followed by Safari 3.1 which hit 6.25%. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer continues on its pace of a slow but steady decline, ending up at 73.75% in May. Microsoft has scheduled second beta of IE8 for an August release, with a generally expected final release in the fourth quarter of this year.