Google Chrome Extensions
Chrome is the newest browser available for people to use on the internet, and the ‘next big thing’ in terms of plugins and apps will be Google Chrome extensions. When Chrome first launched, it was extremely fast and packed with features that Internet users had been looking for for a long time. However, the browser market is already dominated by two major organizations: Microsoft and its Internet Explorer software and Mozilla with Firefox.
How was Google going to position itself in this already slightly saturated market? They opted for optimization of their code, making what is sometimes called slow (the browser) and making it lightning fast. They realized that the everyday online user only cares about retrieving information quickly, and that startup speed and flexibility was an important factor for people when browsing online.
Chrome’s launch was a huge fanfare, but after a few months they struggled to break above the 5% level in terms of overall users. So what was the reason people didn’t try and then stick with Chrome? The answer was personalization.
Internet Explorer’s main advantage over the competition in the browser market was some decidedly underhanded tactics that Microsoft employed over the last twenty years in terms of providing its own browser on new installations of its operating system, Windows. Since then, this practice has been challenged in courts around the world, with MS being forced to pay huge amounts of money in compensation to certain companies and, in fact, probably bankrupting many, many others.
The Internet generation grew up with Windows and Internet Explorer, and it became the de facto standard software for people who didn’t know any better. It was a huge monopoly that looked like it would go on unchecked in perpetuity. Then Firefox was born.
Firefox started as an open source project to create a new, better and faster browser, to try to avoid the monopoly drawbacks caused by Microsoft. IE was not perfect and was becoming slow and susceptible to attacks from writers and virus writers targeting the dominant brand. Firefox was supported by a large number of organizations and individuals, especially tech-savvy netizens who demanded more from its product. Google itself invested in the non-profit organization that was developing Firefox, as well as in the once-defeated Netscape organization.
Firefox flourished and its popularity grew more and more in recent years, as even regular Internet users realized that there is an option to use Internet Explorer at home and in the workplace. Communities of people began working to extend the functionality of Firefox before IE, and these add-ons that were written became more widely distributed until they were considered standard by the browsing population.
When Chrome was released, people remembered how fast Firefox was when it was first released. Many thought that Chrome would become the new alternative to IE because of this speed, but they didn’t realize that the reason it was so fast was because it had a standard installation with no plugins or extensions. This was not a good thing for Google.
The Chromium project (which is in charge of developing both the Chrome browser and the new operating system) had to adapt, so they themselves decided to allow extensions to their browser, so that independent developers could advance the functionality of the software and the features. Users may be able to use features they are already used to in their browser.
The first Google Chrome extensions that were shown were developed by Google and include some very simple plugins as well as a couple of more complex plugins. The functionality of adding a site’s RSS feed to your reader is considered standard for most people, but it wasn’t available until the Chrome extension was released. They also released a ‘check Google mail’ plugin that would tell you how many messages are in your inbox and give you one-click access to your inbox.
The best extension that was revealed early is Bubble Translate, which allowed for ‘on-the-fly’ translation (using Google’s translate feature) of web pages. These are obviously just the tip of the iceberg, and there will be a plethora of plugins, add-ons, and extensions for Google Chrome in the near future. Then we’ll see how he fares against his two well-established rivals.