Is Google The New Microsoft

I notice that some of our "corporate choices" of late have somehow been limited to Google products or Google-influenced products. Microsoft seems on the wane and Google looks like the most-likely replacement in the sense of that IBM once was the dominate corporate IT infrastructure company. Microsoft then took over that role starting around the mid 1980's. Apple is strong, but they are mostly consumer-oriented. Google is also facing anti-trust claims in Europe. IBM and Microsoft were dogged by anti-trust accusations in their heyday. --top (Oct. 2013)

I think I'm seeing this in regard to web browsers. A lot of proprietary software that is promoted as "cross browser" works with IE and Chrome, and sometimes with Safari or Opera. When I ask about FireFox, I get, "Uh, we don't support that." This even though FireFox is the second most-used web browser, ahead of Chrome and those others (as of September 2013; see: http://netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0&qpcustomd=0). My speculation is that this is because, of the browsers mentioned, FireFox is the only one that is both free (as in beer) and open-source. Chrome is free, but closed source. Opera is not free. I suspect that developers of proprietary systems have decided it's not in their profit-making interest to support a platform that doesn't seek either profit or proprietary lock-in. --KenDibble

Remember to bitch to the site if it doesn't support FireFox.
- I usually do. But the problem I'm having at the moment isn't with public websites. It's with various forms of proprietary web-based software designed for quasi-medical recordkeeping and reporting.

The reason for this is that IE and Chrome have significant corporate penetration, and so are reasonable targets for corporate development. Popular as it is, FireFox is primarily seen as (and probably used as) a "home" browser. This has nothing to do with a conspiratorial intent around "profit or proprietary lock-in" and everything to do with the enterprise marketing force that Microsoft and Google have and Mozilla lacks. By the way, Chrome is based on the OpenSource Chromium projects. See http://www.chromium.org/

I see that Chromium is open source. If I wanted to, could I download the source code for the actual Chrome browser?

Of course, you can download the source. You can even change it. An example is IronBrowser.

I am not trying to quibble here; I am trying to understand. The IronBrowser website says (American English version) "SRWare Iron is a real alternative. The browser is based on the Chromium-source and offers the same features as Chrome - but without the critical points that the privacy concern." [sic] My impression is that there is a difference between the "parent" source known as "Chromium" and the end-result browser application called "Chrome". If so, then the website appears to be saying that IronBrowser is, like Chrome, based on the Chromium source, rather than a modified version of Chrome. So I ask again: Is the actual source-code of the end-result browser application called "Chrome" available for my inspection and modification, or is only the parent "Chromium" code available in that way?

As I understand it Chrome is just a stable build of Chromium with some (very minor) changes to make it more enduser-friendly. (Some extra codecs, built-in flash and PDF viewer, auto-update, etc.)

Try this: http://chromium-browser-source.commondatastorage.googleapis.com/ There is an xml page with several versions of chromium source. If you download and install chrome-browser from https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/ you can check the version of it. Might be something like r197479 from 2013-05-01 or similar. Then go to source-page and look for the date or the version. The xml table contains something like <Key>chromium.r197479.tgz</Key>. Write "http://chromium-browser-source.commondatastorage.googleapis.com/chromium.r197479.tgz" into the address bar, and you will get 2GB file with sources I assume. Just to be clear, I didn't try to download this much just for fun. :D

By the way, what would be the motivation for looking through 2GB sources? I remember an article about how unsure people are about encrypting software, because the algorithms are pretty complicated and not many people go through the pain to review the sources and verify the correctness of implementation (like there is no back door or something).

FireFox seems to be very popular in Europe (also in sense of corporate penetration). On a rumor base, IBM forbids the use of IE and allows FireFox. Some other big companies do as well.

It's best for an organization to support at least two browsers in my experience. Sometimes something that doesn't work on one will work on the other. It's like a spare tire.