Google’s Chrome browser gets impromptu launch

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – Google Inc.'s unofficial company motto is "Launch early and iterate." Yet, it appears that someone at Google didn't get the message that this "launch early" philosophy was not to be taken literally with Chrome, a much-ballyhooed Web browser that the tech giant has been developing over the last few years. Early Sept. 1, select technology journalists and software developers in Europe received an e-mail from Google announcing the imminent launch of Chrome, a long-rumored Web browser that would directly compete with Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer.

The announcement, which arrived in the form of a 38-page comic book drawn by acclaimed artist Scott McCloud, was sent out prematurely – a mistake that Google vice president of product management Sundar Pichai acknowledged in an afternoon posting on Google's official blog: "At Google, we have a saying: 'launch early and iterate.' While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well. As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit 'send' a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome." No matter – the Mountain View-based company issued a press release about Chrome and launched it as an open-source beta program the following day.

Read More Article...