Sony Vaio PCs come with Google Chrome
In its latest effort to gain a bigger share of the web browser market, Google has forged a partnership with Sony in which the latter’s PCs will ship with Google Chrome pre-installed, instead of Internet Explorer. The Financial Times reports:
Google confirmed that Sony PCs carrying Chrome had started to go on sale and said it was in talks for similar deals with other computer makers. It said the arrangement was “experimental” and part of wider efforts to boost distribution, including a deal to make Chrome available to internet users who download the RealPlayer software and the company’s first use of television advertising.
Who could resist the world’s most powerful web right? With a reported 2% share of the current web browser market, Google definitely needs to step up its efforts it if wants to dethrone IE as the world’s number web browser.
But what really interested me is this remark by Google executives as mentioned in the FT report:
Google executives express frustration at what they consider a lack of interest among internet users about browsers. “Awareness is shockingly low” given how much people rely on browsers, said Mr Rakowski. “It’s absolutely a problem that people don’t know what a browser is, or how to evaluate one.”
I believe this could be attributed to the fact that IE has been shipped with almost every version of Windows for years which gave Microsoft all the leverage it needed to capture the web browser market from the beginning. Others simply needed to be bold, creative and daring to be of serious competition to IE.
Will this partnership with Sony help Google Chrome grow its share of the web browser market? It remains to be seen, but for now, it is a step in the positive direction.
