The Wall Street Journal reports that Google’s founders and CEO didn’t see eye to eye on building out the Chrome browser or OS, at least, not initially.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, said that initially when Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founders, brought the idea of building a browser or operating system to him six years ago, he was not interested. Schmidt said recently, “At the time, Google was a small company.” “Having come through the bruising browser wars, I didn’t want to do that again,” he added. But when Schmidt saw what a Googler (previously Firefox developer) built, he was convinced it would be a “game changer.” Page also added that he and Sergey “just wore you down.”

Meanwhile, VentureBeat reports Microsoft’s Vice President of Developer and Platform Evangelism, Walid Abu-Hadba, calling Google’s entry into the OS market as a “defensive” play, to keep Microsoft distracted on search.

Related Topics: Google: Browsers | Google: Chrome

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz