October 05, 2009

Google Inc. has taken a new tack in its effort to become a factor in the browser business long dominated by Microsoft Corp.

Last month the company released a plug-in that embeds its Chrome browser into Microsoft's ubiquitous Internet Explorer, a move that could significantly boost its presence on corporate desktops and stick another thorn in the side of its much larger rival.

Google has so far made little headway against IE since unveiling Chrome a year ago. Dubbed Chrome Frame, Google's new open-source plug-in is being cast as a way to instantly boost the notoriously slow JavaScript speed of IE, and to address the conundrum facing Web developers designing sites and applications that rely on Internet standards not supported by IE, like HTML 5.

In a blog post, Google engineers noted that developers often create work-arounds or limit the functionality of Web applications to support IE. Chrome Frame allows them to build fully functioning applications that will run in the Microsoft browser, they said.

While Google portrayed Chrome Frame as a boon for both developers and users, others speculated that the move may be an admission that getting users, especially in large corporate sites, to switch browsers is proving harder than the company anticipated.

"Google is realizing that the potential to get people to move off IE is harder than it thought," said Sheri McLeish, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. "Clearly, Google is gunning for Microsoft in all its businesses, but this is an unexpected path to take for what seemed like an effort on its part to offer a full alternative to IE."

Google's move brought a rapid and sharp retort from Microsoft, which warned that IE users could double their security woes if they use Chrome Frame. Amy Bazdukas, Microsoft's general manager for IE, said that IE8 users running Chrome Frame are also unwittingly discarding all the browsing protections that Microsoft built into IE8.

Source:- http://www.computerworld.com