Google’s a brand that’s best known for web searches and web-based email. The Google Chrome browser, for example, isn’t capturing huge amounts of the market: http://gs.statcounter.com/
But nobody’s paying $100 for Internet Explorer.
I’m not sure how big the market will be , but I am sure there are at least some people who don’t want to pay for Windows on their netbook (and understand that it’s overkill for surfing and light typing), but are scared of Linux as something that’s too complicated for any socially-normal person. The google brand might do the trick.
That’s mostly because Chrome isn’t fully featured yet. It may not be a beta, but it is missing a lot of features that were promised. Like RSS support and plugins. If the browser ever gets finished, it will do pretty well.
Also, note that your URL includes browsers that come with operating systems, which really inflate numbers. Internet Explorer would not be as popular if it didn’t come with Windows. Firefox might without coming with most Linux distros, but Safari definitely wouldn’t without coming with the MacOS. Actually, the fact that Safari comes with 10% of the computer base, and also has a free-to-download version, it seems odd that it is doing so poorly. But, then again, it’s not a fully featured web browser, either.
Anyways, as long as Google’s new OS has an xserver (and will thus be compatible with a majority of preexisting Linux applications, including WINE) it will do well. Just like Chrome (and Safari) would be doing much better if it supported Firefox’s extensions. Or any real extensions at all. Customization is where it’s at.
Google Reader 
Yeah, but it’s not integrated with the browser, nor is it very versatile. Specifically, it isn’t anything like Live Bookmarks (from Modills Firefox). I’ve never seen the point of seeing RSS feeds in something that looks like (or, in this case happens to be) a webpage. The whole point of RSS is for them to send the content to me, not for me to have to go look for it. If I’m gonna have to go look, I might as well just visit the webpage itself.
Oh, for the day that content can actually be pushed. That’s what they promised with Web 2.0. Even RSS readers have to refresh like emails. Why can’t they work like instant messaging software? Or Twitter? You update your page, you send the content to your subscribers.
Yeah, yeah, probably should be another thread.
Hmm, perhaps we have different uses for it? I have Google Reader on my bookmark bar, so it’s a single click away, so I’m not quite sure what you mean by “have to go look for it” (let it alone being the “whole point”)–there’s no “looking” involved; click and you’re there. Once there, I have instant access to 20+ feeds, which all load much quicker than any of the sites themselves would proper, and allows me to easily track what stories I’ve read, which I haven’t, and which I want to save for later. Plus I can access that page from anywhere, home, work, and my iPhone, and they all stay “synced” by virtue of it being a page.
I guess I can see why you might find push useful, but when you subscribe to as many frequently updated feeds as myself, it becomes a complete non-issue as I know every time I load up the page (which is frequent–I usually just keep the tab open), that there will be at least 10+ new stories.
Also, last I checked, Live Bookmarks only updates once every hour (which is a bit of a misnomer)–I like my content like my coffee: fresh and hot
(oh, and Live Bookmarks is headlines only, which is lame and inefficient for loading individual stories–something else that’s much, much faster in Reader)
I tried Chrome again on the strength of this thread.
I still like the same things that I liked about it before – it’s nice and peppy.
I’m uninstalling it for the same reason I did before: It crashes way too much.
Specifically, it crashes any time I leave a tab open with IMDB on it for more than about five minutes. Not a nice quick, “Oh crap, I’m outta here,” crash, either - but a “I’m gonna hang here for three minutes and give you a couple of ‘the following plug-in has stopped responding’ dialog boxes which are unresponsive themselves” crash.
Bleargh.