14 DAY TRIAL // At the press conference held in New York earlier, Google's top dogs, CEO Eric Schmidt and cofounder Sergey Brin, went through several aspects concerning the company. One of the most important ones, from a technology point of view, was Google Chrome, the company's speedy web browser, and the overall cloud computing environment of which Google is a strong backer.
Having been launched for a little over a year, Google Chrome has failed to achieve a considerable market share, hovering at around 3 percent. Some were concerned that this was a sign that the browser wasn't doing as great as Google would want it to be. Both Schmidt and Brin were quick to dismiss this with Brin saying that, in fact, Chrome was exceeding the internal benchmarks the company had initially put in place regarding the adoption rate. Schmidt added that a great focus for the short term was pushing Chrome for Mac, which was still in a very experimental phase and both Google executives emphasized the browser's speed, which they believe is crucial to the user experience.
But the browser is part of the broader initiative to move software into the cloud linked with the upcoming Chrome OS, which will be heavily dependent on online applications, but also with the entire Google online ecosystem of apps and services. Google is a strong advocate of cloud computing, understandable since it makes the vast majority of its revenue from online advertising.
More people online for longer periods of time means more money for the company and Google will try to achieve this by providing online services, by offering a browser that is faster, meaning users will get through more content which in turn means more ads, and even with its own “cloud” operating system Chrome OS, which will be revealed later this year and should become available from manufacturers sometime next year.
But despite its great support for the cloud there are those who point out some flaws with the entire concept. An issue that has sparked a lot of debate is the recent Gmail outages that affected millions of users sometime for several hours. “We’re not happy with any outages,” Brin said, claiming that there was a greater focus on cutting down the recovery time. “The second outage could have been solved in five or 10 minutes, unfortunately we made some errors and it took an hour.” He also pointed out that cloud email systems still fared better than conventional systems when it came to availability.