Google Chrome: A New Take on the Browser, Or New Ad And User Targeting Opportunities?

No doubt you have already heard of Google’s newly launched browser Chrome, based on Chromium’s open source platform. Whether Chrome will quickly eat up market share from IE and Firefox or if it will just end up at the bottom of the playground, remains to be seen. I’ve been trying it for the past several hours and, while the controls are still a bit awkward, the performance is good.

Still, Google Chrome in itself is not what I wanted to bring your attention to: it’s the window (pun intended!) of opportunity it opens for Google in regard to gathering even more data on users and their behavior. In today’s ever tightening world of online advertising, with rapidly dropping CPM levels and advertisers pressuring for accurate targeting, the ones able to fine-tune ad targeting will be the winners. Google has already enough information coming from all those using Google accounts and applications such as the toolbar – with Chrome, they have just taken a bigger bite from the pie and one step forward in user targeting.



The Google Chrome privacy policy states that it will log the IP addresses of whoever downloads the browser and all URLs or other queries typed into Chrome’s address bar will be sent to Google, which will use that information to make suggestions to users.

The browser will also retrieve and process information received from its users but doesn’t specify if it will retain the data or for how long: “Information that Google receives when you use Google Chrome is processed in order to operate and improve Google Chrome and other Google services,” the policy states. Since Google AdWords, AdSense, Ad Manager and DoubleClick are all providing “Google services” now, it’s really not difficult to see how this browser may greatly leverage Google’s advertising capabilities. Fair or not? Let’s sit back and see reactions from the market – I’m sure it won’t take long before we hear back!

For your reading pleasure, see below the full press release for Chrome’s launch.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (September 2, 2008) – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today launched Google ChromeTM, a new open source browser intended to create a better web experience for users around the world. Available in beta in more than 40 languages, Google Chrome is a new approach to the browser that’s based on the simplicity and power that users have come to expect from Google products.

In the early days of the Internet, web pages were frequently little more than text. But today the web has evolved into a powerful platform that enables users to collaborate with friends and coAd Operations Online › Create New Post — WordPresslleagues through email and other web applications, edit documents, watch videos, listen to music, manage finances and much more. Google Chrome was built for today’s web and for the applications of tomorrow.

“We think of the browser as the window to the web – it’s a tool for users to interact with the web sites and applications they care about, and it’s important that we don’t get in the way of that experience,” said Sundar Pichai, Vice President of Product Management, Google Inc. “Just like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome has a simple user interface with a sophisticated core to enable the modern web.”

Making the web experience better for users
Google Chrome was designed to make it easy for users to search and navigate the web for the content they’re looking for.

* A combined search and address bar quickly takes users where they want to go, often in just a few keystrokes.
* When users open a new tab in Google Chrome, they’ll see a page that includes snapshots of their most-visited sites, recent searches and bookmarks, making it even easier to navigate the web.

Google Chrome was engineered to deliver a seamless web experience for users. At its core is a multi-process platform that helps provide users with enhanced stability and security.

* Each browser tab operates as a separate process; by isolating tabs, should one tab crash or misbehave, others remain stable and responsive, and users can continue working without having to restart Google Chrome.
* Google also built a new JavaScript engine, V8, which not only speeds up today’s web applications, but enables a whole new class of web applications that couldn’t exist on today’s browsers.

Contributing to the innovation of browsers through openness
“While we see this as a fundamental shift in the way people think about browsers, we realize that we couldn’t have created Google Chrome on our own,” said Linus Upson, Director of Engineering, Google Inc. “Google Chrome was built upon other open source projects that are making significant contributions to browser technology and have helped to spur competition and innovation.”

To further advance the openness of the web, Google Chrome is being released as an open source project under the name Chromium. The intent is that Google will help make future browsers better by contributing the underlying technology in Google Chrome to the market, while continuing to develop additional features.

How to get Google Chrome

Google Chrome can be downloaded at www.google.com/chrome. It is being released in beta for Windows in over 100 countries in the following languages: Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Portugal), Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Spanish (Latin America), Turkish, English (US), English (UK), Arabic, Czech, Danish, Hebrew, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, Indonesian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Filipino, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovakian, Slovenian, Thai, Vietnamese, and Estonian.

Google Chrome for Mac and Linux users will be available in the coming months. For more information on the open source project, Chromium, visit www.chromium.org.

EDITOR’S NOTE: For screen shots or b-roll, visit www.google.com/chrome/press.

About Google Inc.
Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.