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excellent point, surely worth a read

And according to the writer of this blog, Google actually competes with Microsoft office and google's chrome browser has a wide acceptance? He must get real. I have nobody around me using chrome browser. 70% does not even know what Firefox or Linux is. But they all know and use IE and Microsoft Office, and 90% of them are aware of Safari and iTunes. 96% (4% being tech savy) are going to stick with Windows or MacOS. However, they all know about Google for sure but only for searching the internet when needed. I am a happy OpenOffice user, and have all kinds of Unix/Linux flavors on my VMWare workstation and will not give up Windows.

Hi, I'm the author of the article.

The point isn't whether or not chrome has a wide aceptance, I agree with you that it doesn't. I only know a few people that use it, and many that don't even know it exists. The point is that the fact that it's there and better than IE forces Microsoft to innovate. This is also why Google has been sponsoring Mozilla to develop firefox. Even if normal users don't use firefox or chrome Microsoft is forced to make a better browser else they'l lose marketshare. In the long run they can't be in the market with a clearly inferior browser.

Note that Microsoft doesn't really have much incentive to make a top of the line browser, since that would potentially threaten their office franchise when browsers become fast enough to execute one of the many online apps that can replace some of the functionality of word, excel and outlook. They aren't perfect yet, but they are getting better at a rapid rate. Look at IE6 and how terribly it performed, and then look at what happened when firefox entered the market. IE has clearly gotten better because of the competition.

And the main point is that Google doesn't care which browser you use, all they care about is that browsers are fast, standards compliant and execute javascript really fast. They don't make money on browsers, they make money when people are online searching google, using Gmail, maps, docs and all their other offerings. Better browsers are a catalyst for making a better web experience, and forcing the battle on to the net where Google is much more at home that Microsoft.

Its not a good idea to give your data in hands of google moderators who dont give a damn about your freedoms.