Chrome for Clunkers


	Chrome for Clunkers

merrie

9-26-2009 7:19 AM

165 views

tags:

firefox, google chrome, internet explorer, chrome frame, safari, wave

merrie says:

In a little more than a year, Google Chrome, the search company's speedy and innovative Web browser, has managed to win over about 3 percent of Internet surfers. Is that good or bad? It's certainly not a blockbuster, but consider the hurdles Google faces. Unlike Internet Explorer or Safari, Chrome doesn't come pre-installed on any computers. True, Mozilla Firefox faces the same problem"but Firefox, which now has about 23 percent of the market, has been around since 2004. You might also argue that Firefox captured an easy market"people who were sick of IE and wanted something better. Chrome can't do the same; everyone who wanted to leave IE has done so already, and the only folks left to convert are those who don't know any better.

How do you persuade people to upgrade their browser when they don't even know what a browser is? You hide the upgrade. That seems to be the ingenious theory behind Chrome Frame, a plug-in for Internet Explorer that Google unveiled this week.

4 Comments |

Add a Comment

9-26-2009 7:23 AM

merrie

Chrome Frame does to IE what spinach does to Popeye—it instantly blesses Microsoft’s browser with the ability to do amazing things.

Chrome Frame does this by replacing IE’s guts. At the heart of every Web browser is the “rendering engine”—the code that processes and displays Web pages. About half the people on the Web are running older versions of IE—Versions 6 and 7—whose rendering engines are antiquated; they can’t process new HTML tags required by the most advanced Web applications, and they’ve got slow JavaScript engines, making it tedious to run complex programs like Gmail or Google Maps. Chrome Frame simply injects Chrome’s rendering engine into IE. After you install it, your browser ...

9-26-2009 12:45 PM

murieleileen

Thanks merrie. I'm not such a computer person, but that made me feel much smarter.

9-26-2009 5:59 PM

merrie

It's just finding your inner geek.

9-26-2009 6:01 PM

merrie

Here's a new feature on Google News: Google Fast Flip

Login to Comment. Not a member yet? Sign up

Today's Top Clips

visit the Top Clips page

View the Top Clips from September 26, 2009

Embed This Clip In Your Site...

<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color:#e5e5e5;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/0a4716a6-90d8-4ee5-9ea3-5553a843f899/2844A083-2F61-4C46-9BF3-D7C9D3B4216C/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.slate.com/id/2229511/" href="http://www.slate.com/id/2229511/" style="font-size: 11px;">www.slate.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.slate.com/id/2229511/"><SPAN class="h1_subhead">Google's ingenious plan to spruce up outdated versions of Internet Explorer.</SPAN></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.slate.com/id/2229511/"><div align="center"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/blog_cache/www.slate.com/img/382D3583-3759-4AFF-9162-AD8EF6EE8FBD" alt="Internet Explorer and Google Chrome logos." /></div></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.slate.com/id/2229511/"><P>I'm not saying that these IE holdouts are merely ignorant about the alternatives. The problem goes deeper than that: They don't even know they're using IE. They don't know they're using anything in particular—many people think that when they click on the blue IE icon, they're clicking on "the Internet." As Brian Rakowski, director of product management for Chrome, puts it, "People just don't know what a browser is." </P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.slate.com/id/2229511/"><P>There are no hard numbers on this, but Rakowski's not kidding. Ask your tech-unsavvy friends or your parents which browser they use, and chances are you'll get a quizzical look and an answer like, "I use Yahoo—or is that not a browser?" That's what one woman told a Google rep who was stopping people in Times Square this spring to ask a simple question: "What is a browser?" Watch what happened in the video below.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.slate.com/id/2229511/"><div align="center"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/o4MwTvtyrUQ&hl=en&fs=1&" height="329" width="400" wmode="opaque" quality="high" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></div></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/2844A083-2F61-4C46-9BF3-D7C9D3B4216C/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content9.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

New from the makers of Clipmarks: Amplify.com - Don't just share the news...Amplify it!

Clipmarks: Home; New Clips; Top Clips; Dashboard

Popular Topics: News; Life; Science; Technology; Entertainment

Get Started: Sign Up; Install Clipping Tool; How Clipping Works; Clip-to-Blog™; ClipSearch

Tools and Resources: FAQ; ClipWeek; Top Clippers; Top Tags; Site Map

About Clipmarks: About Us; Contact; Copyright; Privacy; EULA

Search Options

Today's Top Clips