Google’s Beating Apple—But Not Where You’d Expect

In all the hubbub of the Nexus One premiere this week, another Google milestone has gone largely unnoticed. (Even I saw the headline earlier this week, but opted to cover a Nexus story instead.) While we’ve all anticipated Google coming out with a smartphone to end all smartphones (and start calling them “superphones” ), they’re beating Apple in another area: the browser wars.

According to one measure, Google’s Chrome browser is now the #3 most popular browser, behind IE and Firefox. And why is that so important? Because the guy they just beat out, #4, is Apple’s default browser, Safari. Metrics firm Net Applications reports that Chrome has cornered 4.63% of the browser market, enough to edge out Safari’s 4.46% of the market.

PCWorld points out that the 0.7 percentage point bump for Chrome in December may have been fueled by the release of the browser for Mac and Linux. Safari gained 0.1 percentage point in December, so it doesn’t appear that Google directly stole a lot of their marketshare.

IE continues to dominate, with 62.7% of the market, although it lost nearly a percentage point in December (continuing a six month trend of around 0.9 point losses). Firefox also lost ground in December, falling 0.1 point to 24.6%.

With such a narrow margin of victory, Chrome and Safari will probably continue to vie neck and neck for that third-place spot for some time. Chrome was officially released for Windows in December 2008—pretty quick to take over that spot in the first place. What do you want to bet Google would be happy to repeat that victory in other areas?

What do you think? Is this a turning point for Google and/or Chrome, or for Apple? Or is this just another battle in the Google-Apple war?

Shiny Future for Chrome?

For all of the talk of social media, software as a service (SaaS) and the future of the Internet one of the most important components for delivery is that workhorse of the whole deal; the browser. Right now, Internet Explorer is the market leader with Firefox a solid second. While Safari will always be limited to the Mac-iverse the introduction of Chrome version 3 for the PC reminds us that Google needs to be a part of this mix as well. Hey, it wouldn’t be the Internet unless Google was involved, right?

TechCrunch reports that there is more to the picture though as revealed in an interview by Reuters like Mac users finally getting their chance to see their reflection in the Chrome world.

While Chrome currently has just under 3 percent of the browser market currently, a year from now, they’re planning to have at least 5 percent. More importantly, 2 years from now, if Chrome doesn’t have at least 10 percent share, Google will be “exceptionally disappointed,” Chrome Engineering Director Linus Upson told Reuters. And Google’s own internal projections for the browser are even higher, apparently.

But Google also has a big wildcard it has yet to play: Mac support. And in the same Reuters article, Google confirmed that its Chrome for Mac will be available before the end of this year.

As pointed out in the article, right now Mac users are a bit stuck with a slow Firefox experience but a lot of add-ons or a quicker Safari with fewer bells and whistles. Chrome for the Mac promises to bring both to the table. Personally, I am very excited because I am wearing out the force quit on Firefox as a recent Mac convert. TC’s MG Siegler makes takes the anticipation to another level

Chrome promises to bring a combination of both speed and plug-ins to the Mac. I’ve been using the developer builds of Chromium (the open source project behind Chrome) for months now, and it’s definitely getting really, really close to being ready for prime time.

I’m in. What’s your browser preference and does Chrome look to be a part of your future?

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RockMelt: the Next Netscape? (And Do They Want to Be?)

Remember Netscape? Come on, you know you do. If you were online before 2000, you probably remember the erstwhile most-popular web browser, the predecessor of Internet Explorer, and ancestor of Firefox. The original Internet success story, Netscape went public before making a profit, then doubled its revenues every quarter in 1995. In the mid-90s, they had 90% of the browser market—but by the end of 2006, less than 1% of Internet users were still on Netscape. The following year, Netscape released its final version.

Now that we’ve had our history lesson for the day, let’s get up to speed. Netscape founder Marc Andreessen has finally anointed a successor to Netscape—and it ain’t Firefox. Although FF is the child of Netscape’s open-source Mozilla initiative, it’s another, as-yet-unreleased browser that has Andreessen’s attention these days: RockMelt.

Andreessen has worked with RockMelt’s co-founders before. Tim Howes worked at Netscape, and both Howes and Eric Vishria were executives at Andreessen’s Opsware (now sold to HP). The project is so early in development that no one is talking about it (and robots.txt blocks all user-agents from their site).

The company site only features the logo and a signup for updates. The New York Times says there used to be a privacy policy on the site, but after a reporter asked about it, the policy was removed. However, the NYT says the policy indicated RockMelt would somehow integrate with Facebook (a Facebook spokeswoman said they had no knowledge of RockMelt, but Andreessen is on FB’s board).

The policy says that a person could use a Facebook ID to log into RockMelt, suggesting that the browser may be tailored to display Facebook updates and other features as users browse the Web. Another browser, Flock, based on Firefox, already incorporates feeds from social networking sites.

The article also notes that Google Chrome has failed to gain much of a foothold in the browser market so far, despite Google’s prominent positioning efforts. Other startups without Google’s face time could face even greater barriers to entry—but integrating with FB could be a good way to gain some of that exposure.

What do you think? What kind of implementation would you expect for a browser integrated with Facebook? Would you be interested in that? Will Andreessen’s endorsement be enough to get RockMelt more than hype?