Google Chrome introduces extensions: Getting tough for Firefox?

A post by the Google guy Matt Cutts caught my attention – How to Write a Chrome Extension in Three Easy Steps. Well, so behind the scene the developers of Chromium have been on it. They have developed a very basic framework for extension support. Currently only available in Google Chrome developer edition, the framework intends provide full-fledged support for user-created extensions. The support is in nascent stages now and there is no way to inject CSS etc. but a single JavaScript file which does the work for now.

However the problem statement at the developer center reads:

Chromium can’t be everything to all people.  People use web browsers in a variety of environments and for a wide variety of jobs.  Personal tastes and needs vary widely from one user to the next.  The feature needs of one person often conflict directly with those of another.  Further, one of the design goals of Chromium is to have a minimal light-weight user interface, which itself conflicts with adding lots of features.

User-created extensions have been proposed to solve these problems:

• The addition of features that have specific or limited appeal (“that would be great as an extension”).
• Users coming from other browsers who are used to certain extensions that they can’t live without.
• Bundling partners who would like to add features to Chromium specific to their bundle.

Does this imply:

• To build on the popular extensibility of Mozillian browsers.
• Be appealing to Firefox users as the smarter browser and easy transition.

Initially Google Chrome came out as a light-weight browser quite like Firefox which has/had to a large extent the backing of Google. Is Firefox now playing the step-son to Google? With this one attempt and the backing of a brand like Google, Chrome is definitely becoming a strong contender to Firefox. However it remains to be seen how long will the extension-supporting Chrome keep away from extension-bloat. Will it ultimately become “just another browser”?

Apparently it’s not a browser war anymore. With the browsers almost neck-to-neck it’s turning into a brand war or maybe something else. Also with the growing internet usage (growing? – stats show there’re almost no internet users elsewhere in the world as compared to the US ), social media and online advertising, there’s a lot at stake. May be Google is trying to jump a (yet-unforeseen) technology curve and aims to build on Chrome as a powerful tool to drive the internet revolution or online-advertising. Having your own browser collect usage-statistics of user-behavior and introducing behavioral-adsense – you see the relation and what I’m pointing to?