My irrational hesitance in downloading Chrome
It’s summed up neatly in this Wired article:
There were also mixed feelings because of the group’s attachment to Firefox, an icon of open source development and a hedge against Microsoft’s dominance. “The fear was that people were going to read this as sabotaging Firefox,” says Erik Kay, an engineer who joined the team in October 2006. The Googlers were mollified by the fact that their browser would be 100 percent open source: Google’s innovations could potentially find their way into the Mozilla codebase. “We really want to make Firefox successful, as well as other open source browsers,” Upson says.
Granted, this is only part of the reason. I also was hoping to wait until I buy a new laptop. My current one is now a few years old and I’m hesitant to download yet another browser onto it.
Neither will I, Google is following the similar path as MS, they are deviating from the core competency.Which is not a healthy sign. Anyways I think they still have 5 more years of dominance left in them, till they become “elephants who can not dance”. I am just waiting for the next disruption.
People download Firefox largely because IE doesn’t work as well as they want. Firefox is satisfactory. Why experiment further when you’re already happy with what you’ve got? That’s my justification for not bothering with Chrome at the moment. Google, I’m sure you’re lovely, but I’m already in a long term relationship. Sorry, babe.
I’m a big fan of Firefox. I’ve been using it for years now. It’s so much nicer, I feel dirty when I have to use Internet Explorer (usually for cross-browser compatibility testing a little else).
That being said, I like Firefox on its merits, because for the longest time it’s been the best browser available. Ask yourself why you feel loyal to it? If it’s only because it’s an awesome browser, you owe it to yourself to give Chrome a try and see if it’s better. If it’s because you dislike the Microsoft monopoly, the same logic applies.
Paradigms shift over time, software paradigms more often than most. The best we can do for ourselves is try to stay on top of the change, lest we be left behind.