Google just released it’s own browser, Chrome. After a successful allience with FireFox, google aims to expand non-IE users by releasing Chrome.

It’s said that Chrome is intended to rival Microsoft’s latest version of Internet Explorer (IE). However, I believe that what drives google to release Chrome is the fact that the latest IE blocks websites to gather user’s preference information. You see,  this situation creates difficuties Google to target their ads to the right audience. And for us, as onlne business owners, this could affect our internet marketing efforts as well, indirectly.

Not only that, Microsoft is also trying to restrict which toolbars that can be plugged in to IE. This would be another barrier for companies that gather informations through toolbars like Alexa, Compete and of course Google.

In the perspective of Internet Marketers, we rely our marketing information from companies like Alexa, Compete and Google that provide users’ information openly. Therefore, Microsoft plans to blocks their rival could lead a disaster to a lot of small online entrepreneurs. Especially, if Microsoft decided to close the information they manage to gather for themselves or planning to sell the information at a hefty price tag.

What can we do?

Stop using Windows. OK, I know that is a difficult choice. So what is the alternative for that?  Especially, for online business owners, we need also to protect our business. One simple thing that we can do is perhaps by not using IE, and support other browser like FireFox, Chrome instead.

You could be more proactive by encouraging your customers to use other browsers, whenever it is
possible. If you are selling digital products, you can promote other browsers at your thank you page/download page. Or if you have a blog you can promote other browsers at your own blog. Just like what I did here, in this blog post:

Download Chrome here.