I wrote yesterday about the Microsoft reply to the use of Chrome Frame, and, while many places were concentrating on articles about the speed increases, those same places now seem to have caught up on the ‘shot’ that Google was taking at the core of Microsoft.

This morning, Adrian Kinsley-Hughes, from ZDnet, asks who do you trust more? Given the choices, Microsoft and Google, I immediately chose Google. I was amazed however, by the fact that many more, though not a majority by any means, chose Microsoft.

It might be due to some wishful thinking about the upcoming Windows 7, or perhaps they really have some inkling that Microsoft has gotten better, but those of us who have been around this planet for more than 10 years, and are above the level of cretin, know how many screw-ups there are on the Microsoft unvarnished resume. For Google, it is too early to say – they just don’t have the same number of dubious distinctions over the same long period of time.

The point of the article, though, as many discovered, was not a full length indictment of Microsoft, but rather a short critique of the latest browsers, Chrome versus Internet Exploder 8.

For many, the choice is simple, they choose speed.

Speed makes people notice, and security is something only nerds and programmers brag about. It may be nice, but it’s like the way we talk about cars, everyone talks about horsepower, and 0-60 times… almost no one brags about the 4 – caliper Brembo brakes, and the 60-0 times, except for the brake manufacturers.

But, given that Chrome was designed to be secure, as well as fast, and, the Google programmers have no series of bad releases behind them, and none of the bad habits that have become part of the ‘browser than everyone loves to hate’, I trust the ability of Chrome Frame to be a better experience.

It’s not so much a Google-good, Microsoft-bad dichotomy, it’s simply the observation, that everyone should make, that Microsoft does not seem to learn from its mistakes.

Think about how many fixes over the past 9 years have been something discovered in one version of Windows, say Windows 2000, and then we find they were replicated in Windows XP, and Windows Vista. The fact that these same errors appear over generations of operating system tends to conclusively prove that (second time, for the hard of learning) Microsoft does not learn from its own mistakes. If it did, we would not have become used to the second Tuesday of the month ritual.

As stated in the title, rather than get bent out of shape when someone improves upon your product, and trying to discredit the effort, bring on the successor, that was hinted about so much…Gazelle. Or else, shut up and let the market decide.

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The Big Gamble

Opera, the fastest and most secure web browser