One of the many things I do in my day-time job is to create and manage PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns in Google (Adwords) and Bing (Adcenter). I prefer Mozilla Firefox for most of my browsing needs, but I occasionally use other browsers – Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Opera (ordered by frequency of use, in descending order).

I was rather surprised yesterday when I tried to access Microsoft Adcenter using Google Chrome, only to learn that Adcenter does not run on Chrome (screen shot below – click on it to see full size image).

Microsoft Adcenter Cannot Run on Google Chrome

On checking its system requirements page, I learnt that Adcenter only works in IE and Firefox. Other browsers are not supported because Adcenter runs on Microsoft Silverlight, which apparently doesn’t support browsers with a “small” market-share. A certain guy complained about this as early as 2008.

Google Chrome has quite some market share in my opinion. At least that’s what I see in the analytics reports of some of the websites I manage. Like the one in the screen shot below (click on it to see full size image).

Visitors to one of my websites by web browser

I’ve also read in the official Microsoft Silverlight site that silverlight 4 supports Google Chrome.  So why can’t Adcenter run on Chrome? I think it is a deliberate act on Microsoft’s part. Chrome has gained considerable market share in its two and a half years history, and is probably going to gain more.

If Browser War II was between IE and Firefox, Browser War III will be between the IE and FF on one hand, and Google Chrome on the other hand. Microsoft probably knows this. I bet they will do anything to ensure IE continues to dominate, and Chrome remains in the shadows. Though it is a small and almost insignificant part, inability to run Adcenter on Chrome is a symptom of the forthcoming BW III.

Hey, don’t take this too seriously, I’m only speculating ;-)