The Channel Wire

December 11, 2008

Google is preparing to do something with its Chrome browser the company hasn't done with many of its other popular products such as Gmail: take it out of beta and make it an official product. The current speculation is that the move is part of a planned offensive to let computer makers bundle the software with their products.

TechCrunch reported on Wednesday that Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of user experience, told Mike Arrington at Le Web 08 that the Chrome browser would remove the beta tag, making it a bona fide product offering.

The Chrome browser is an aberration for the search engine giant, because the more popular and widely used application Gmail has existed in beta since its release. The speculation around Gmail is that Google doesn't want to devote the resources to support it as fully as they would need to if it went beyond the beta stage.

Chrome has been on the market on a few months, as it was released over the summer, and joins the already hot browser wars. Mozilla's open-source Web browser Firefox is competing with Microsoft's Internet Explorer for the top spot, with IE leading the overall percentage of users by a wide margin. Apple's browser, Safari, is also in the fray and Opera refuses to give up.

Initially, it seemed that users were swapping to Chrome in large numbers right after the release, but since then its market share has receded, hovering around 1 percent. Firefox, meanwhile, makes up nearly 20 percent of the browser market.

For a company that is built around ad revenue, the current economic times have prompted even such a large well-entrenched company to look for new sources of revenue. And Google might think that by bundling software with machines as they are built, they can increase their footprint.

Still, Google's Chrome has an uphill battle against Microsoft and Firefox, both of which are already in heavy rotation with daily Web users.