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Comment by mattmaroon | Hacker News Reader

Not really very relevant. Anyone who knows what a benchmark is is already running something other than IE. And who would install a Chrome plugin for IE when they could just as easily use Chrome?

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If they don't realize what it actually is. There are a fair number of people out there who don't want to use another browser because it's confusing to them, or they like IE.

A website could just put a big "Speed up this application" button that installs the Chrome Frame plugin, and as far as the end-user is concerned, it's just like installing Flash - and they're still "using" internet explorer.

The target audience for this is not the people who are interested in Chrome; it's the people who aren't interested in moving away from IE.

Maybe users who must use IE because of the policies of their company?

But if that's the case, isn't that likely because they have internal applications that are IE only? It seems more like a marketing thing--Overcome people's inhibitions by letting them feel like they "only" installed a plugin and are still running IE.

Only websites with a specific meta-tag set are going to use the Chrome rendering engine, every other site will render using the default IE-rendering engine, including any internal IE-only applications.

Also, although it is hard to believe, some people actually think IE is a good browser. I don't understand how or why, but some people actually do.

If I were hosting a SaaS offering that was Javascript-heavy, I might deploy the site in such a way that IE users were prompted to download the Chrome plugin, thereby allowing my app to run at a tolerable speed.

We recently gave up on GWT at work for precisely the reason that IE6 and friends are waaaay too slow to do anything meaningful in GWT. Had we had this option we might have stuck with GWT instead of rewriting in Flex.

I think it's a matter of psychological leap (or the absense thereof).

Changing browsers requires aquiring new habbits. Most people don't like change. On the other hand, they're already familiar with the concept of a browser plugin thanks to Flash and Accrobat. The Google Chrome Frame can be understood as a speed booster and a bunch of additional features for IE rather than a new browser.

Edit: Icey burn me to it.

The key is that sites have to add a meta tag for the chrome browser to be used instead. It is opt-in only. This means that all those corporate sites that require IE won't be affected, but a user can still get the upgraded experience for sites that desire it.

There are certain corporate websites that work better or only on IE. People may not want to switch between 2 browsers & so stick with IE>

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