With the release of Google Chrome beta for Windows and the planned beta soon after for Mac and Linux. It is obvious that a major player in the internet field has finally extended it’s claws into the browser.
Google Chrome, based on webkit, has essentially made it’s rendering speed and features the same as Safari. A lot of people are hailing about it, even newspapers for the ordinary folks.
According to techCrunch, some people thinks it can catch up to firefox’s 20% market share in 2 year time.
I’m not so sure about that. Don’t get me wrong, Google is certainly strong however, with no development tool comparable to Firebug and I certainly can’t see any easy module installation functionality at this moment.
Google Chrome will not be as successful as Firefox, Google Chrome will only be categorised the same as Opera and Safari.
The 20% marketshare that Firefox enjoys today at the end of the day is due to the developer community spreading it like fire whenever they have the chance to do so on their relative’s machines and at their workplace.
The ability to have completely customisable addons is what made Firefox. Unless other browsers do the same, they’ll always be “consumer” oriented browsers that will require enormous amount of public advertising to get any market shares.
So. I don’t doubt Google Chrome as a browser that we developers will need to add it onto our list of “supported browsers” in a year or two. But gaining the marketshare of Firefox? Maybe in 5 years time.
I’ve found it really frustrating to learn that many people in the developer world and indeed the world in general stupidly mixes ‘key’ selling words like ‘Open Standards’, ‘Open Source’ etc.. wrongly.
Here is what the Director, BBC Future Media & Technology had to say about seeing AAC and H.264 being adopted in the BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/08/open_industry_standards_for_au.html.
After reading that, I think it can be concluded that Erik Huggers is not suitable for the job. Either he is rediculously not clued up. OR he is in the pockets of Apple.
AAC _requires_ a patent license to implement. It is NOT open standards. Ogg Vorbis and Theora can very well be! (At this time apparently no one knows whether there are hidden patents associated with those technologies)
In any case, this is more reasons not to have software patents in the first place. Erik Huggers could be right that they’re open standards in the UK as software patents are not recognised. However we live in a world, not a single country. Half the world do acknowledge software patents.
Ok folks. I know each of us probably have a million or two mp3 files on our hard disk of our favourite music. We can say we’ve almost taken the mp3 format for granted all these years. A little known fact to those not in the business though is that mp3 is a proprietary format and they are actually charging a hefty sum for royalty payment!
Little do we know that when we do podcasting with mp3 files. While the sound that comes out of the file is copyrighted by us. The fact that you’re using a mp3 format to stream your podcast is enough for you to pay for a license before you use it!
Those in the business knows all about this. They also know about an open-source alternative codec that is truely free to use and distribute and free from royalty called ‘Ogg Vorbis’. But for one reason or another, major manufacturers of mp3 players (Apple) are not incoporating support for ogg files on their players!
Many smaller manufactuers of mp3 players such as iRiver have been incorporating such features for a while now! Guys, I believe it is time to re-encode all our files into ogg.
Come on, make some noise for ogg! (Flac is a lossless alternative format)
http://www.vorbis.com/
I’m officially switching alliegance to the ogg format. Though my iPod nano has no chance in playing ogg. I’ll have to just endure a slight delay when I use iTunes to re-encode ogg into aac for the iPod. No biggie, and at least I know that I’m not paying some tossers who’ve come up with the mp3 file format just to have some sort of patent on it and collecting royalties for something that should never have been.
I would like to pledge those who’re in the music ’scene’ to start releasing files in ogg format!
Later
/rant over
