I predicted wrongly 2 years ago that Google would make their own OS. Today with Chrome I have been redeemed!
Well ok not exactly. I was still far off both by time and result, but the thinking is the same. In order for Google to roll out the kind of products they want to work in the way they want, they have to deal with the environment their apps work in, and that means working with the browser – which so far makes varied results. It therefore makes sense they make their own browser given the ever higher level of complexity they want their apps to do.
The average Joe is probably aware we developers hate IE, but may not completely know why. Explaining why is not the point of this post, but let me just tell you – IE sucks seriously big time. Anyone who’s ever had to deal with CSS, UTF or language standards, or Java for example, will understand why developers have thinning hair or zero social life as they spend too much time trying to get their apps to work on IE. Firefox helped save them a bit with its standards compliancy, but has so far not been entirely reliable imho, and it still lags behind with approximately 30% market share. I love it and support it, but it’s been crashing on me recently, and anyone who knows code knows that a crashing browser is serious stuff.