Jon Bradford: Marissa Mayer, the Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google, announced today at LeWeb 2008 that Google Chrome would leave beta “before the end of the year”. The reason? Because OEMs were unwilling to offer the browser until it is in full release.
There will be those who demand the release of a Mac/Linux version and a version which will allow for the inclusion of extensions similar to Firefox. What I find most striking is that it is the OEMs who appear to have demanded that the roadmap for Chrome to be accelerated to exit beta.
Could OEM PC makers be in such a bad way that receiving large sums of money from Google to install Chrome be the only way to stem their unprofitable businesses. Could Google also be fighting back against the recent agreement between Microsoft and Dell who agreed to pre-install the Live Search Toolbar on the latter’s PCs – scrapping a deal which Dell originally had with Google.
This development demonstrates the far reaching impact Google is having beyond its search business into hardware.
UPDATE: Google Chrome (BETA) has gone live but has it changed? It appears to have gone from 0.4.154.33 to 1.0.154.36 – I eagerly await the changelog!
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