By Mike Musgrove
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 3, 2008

For Web users, it's now possible to have all Google, all the time.

With the launch of its browser yesterday, Google staked claim to one of the few areas of the Internet where it didn't already have a foothold and ratcheted up its ongoing competition with the behemoth Microsoft.

The 10-year-old company released Chrome, a new browser that some analysts said would allow Google to be the go-to resource for everything a Web surfer wants.

The search engine giant pushed its new Web-navigating software as being fast, secure and easy to use compared with Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which holds about 80 percent of the browser market.

"There have been a lot of advances in the browser space," said Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management at Google, in a news conference yesterday. "[But] we believe that browsers should evolve a lot more to keep pace with how the Web is evolving."

Tech industry analysts yesterday said the search engine company's move was not surprising because it would give it closer access to its Web-surfing users.

"This is long overdue," said Benjamin Schachter, an analyst with UBS Securities. "The idea that Google was going to let its fiercest competitor control the gateway for getting to it never made sense."

Schachter said it was too early to tell whether Chrome will be a success. Google has entered many markets in the past few years with a range of offerings, including efforts to simplify online shopping and organize medical records. In most areas, he said, Google hasn't made much of an impact.

"The technophiles will all download this and try it out," he said. "But the question is: Is this going to be compelling enough for the mainstream consumer? Will my mother use this?"

Until now, the search engine giant was satisfied to have its software applications "hitch-hike" as add-on programs for browsers such as Firefox, said Tim Bajarin, a tech industry analyst with Creative Strategies. Yesterday's browser launch is just the latest indication that "Google aspires to be everywhere," he said.

Tech industry analyst Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies, saw a defensive element in Google's move to enter the browser market. Microsoft has sometimes tried to encourage Internet Explorer users to try its own search technology and other services, he said.

Microsoft released a short statement yesterday in response to Chrome's launch.

"The browser landscape is highly competitive," it reads, "but people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips."

The Firefox browser, meanwhile, has grown in popularity, mostly at the expense of Internet Explorer. Development of the browser, which is closing in on worldwide market share of 20 percent, is essentially funded by Google's support of the Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit organization.

Google's founders said its browser development team would collaborate on certain areas "where it makes sense to do so."

"I hope that big chunks of Chrome can make it into the next generation of Firefox," Google co-founder Sergei Brin said in a news conference.

Google said the Chrome software had been in development for two years. The version made available online yesterday is compatible only with Windows computers, but Mac and Linux versions are in the works.

Pichai said Chrome was "kind of an ironic name." Among browser software developers, the term refers to the window frames, menus and toolbars that browser users are accustomed to seeing as they surf the Web every day. Google's intention with the project was to keep such distractions as unobtrusive as possible.

"The goal was to make people forget they are using a browser," he said.