Google Tackles Microsoft In Launch of Browser - WSJ.com

An audacious move to privatize the web -- and one that, if successful, will probably have more negative implications for Firefox and Safari than IE

Google executives have expressed concern that existing browsers might fail to support the sort of new Web-based applications they want to develop as they seek to expand the company's influence beyond search. By building its own Web-browsing software, Google is ensuring that it will have a platform for its Internet services that needn't conform to other companies' standards.

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"We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser," wrote Sundar Pichai, a Google vice president of product management, on the company site. "What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build."

Google Tackles Microsoft In Launch of Browser - WSJ.com