Google Chrome launched September 2, 2008

On Sep 2, 2008, Google launched its first beta version of the Chrome Web browser. For better and for worse, this was transformational both for Google and the web. While this was the browser that finally freed us from the tyranny of Microsoft Internet Explorer, it effectively transferred power from one monopolist to another.

Chrome was a departure for Google

Launching a Web browser was a bit of a departure for Google. By 2008, Google had moved beyond its search engine roots, but was mostly a software-as-a-service company. Prior to releasing Chrome, Google promoted the Firefox browser. They even ran a campaign paying website operators with an AdSense account $1 for everyone who clicked their banner ad and installed Firefox. I was sorry to see this campaign end, both because I liked Firefox and because it was a non-intrusive way to monetize this site in those days.

Google continues to fund Firefox, paying to be Firefox’s default web browser, and providing Mozilla with its biggest source of revenue. This practice landed Google in regulatory hot water. But for the last 16 years, they have also been competing with Firefox.

Chrome took a page from Apple’s playbook, using the Webkit browser engine. But Google did use their own JavaScript engine, and eventually they forked WebKit to create their own rendering engine. This engine not only powers Chrome, but also Microsoft Edge and most other so-called alternative browsers that aren’t Firefox, including Opera, Brave, and Vivaldi.

The choice of Webkit made sense. It was lightweight, fast, and standards compliant. Firefox also tried to be standards compliant, so this meant web designers who followed standards didn’t have to worry about how their site rendered in Chrome versus Firefox versus Safari. They could follow the standards to handle those three browsers sufficiently well, and then do what they needed to do to accommodate Internet Explorer. It also meant sites that already rendered fine in Safari or Firefox probably looked fine in Chrome as well.

Why Google wanted a web browser

So why did Google make Chrome? There were three reasons. First, with Google shifting focus to providing software as a service, it needed a reliable web browser and Microsoft wasn’t going to be a reliable partner for that.

Second, Google was still making significant money off search. If they controlled the browser, they could find out more about users’ behavior on those sites, and use it to improve search results. They would know the difference between a spam site that was really good at SEO and a site that people actually read. This would allow them to downrank the spam site and uprank the site people actually used. And for a time, Google did.

Finally, Google stood to profit from the web being a better overall user experience. A better browser meant more time online, which meant serving up more ads. This would benefit companies other than Google, showing a trace of altruism.

Passing Internet Explorer

It only took 3 years and 7 months for Chrome to surpass Internet Explorer in browser usage. This wrested control of the Web from Microsoft. Taking control from one huge corporation and giving it to another wasn’t necessarily an improvement. But promoting web standards so web site operators didn’t have to worry so much about how sites looked in various browsers was a good thing, at least.

Google was the first really big IPO of the post dotcom era, going public in 2004. Investors afraid of missing out on the next Microsoft weren’t disappointed in Google, as long as they held their shares long enough. There wasn’t one single thing that pushed Google to that level, but having the dominant Web browser for more than a decade was a big part of that puzzle.

Chrome still leads in browser share today. That said, I don’t use it unless I have to. I switched to Chrome for a while, when it released a 64-bit version and 64-bit Firefox was still a ways off. But I switched back once Firefox had a 64-bit version, largely because Chrome sends telemetry data to Google to use in its various algorithms, and I don’t really want to be a part of that. Theoretically, time spent on a site in Chrome is an indicator of quality. But I don’t notice that making a difference in its search results. I get more relevant search results from Duckduckgo these days, and DuckDuckGo doesn’t have the benefit of that. Chrome has pretty decent security as long as you keep it up to date, so a lot of security pros use it. But I’m not wild about the privacy implications.

What about Brave and other alternative browsers?

Other browsers like Brave, Edge, Vivaldi, and Opera also are forked from the Chromium project, so they may or may not be also sending telemetry to Google. I am not adept enough at examining source code to make that determination. It’s a lot easier for me to use Firefox, and I like Firefox better anyway.

You don’t expect a guy who operates a site called the Silicon Underground to use the Justin Bieber of Web browsers, do you?

But that’s enough snark. Happy birthday to the Justin Bieber of Web browsers, Google Chrome, from the Silicon Underground.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.