Let’s be clear about this. As I’ve said several times, the browser is the desktop workspace for the web, and I discussed its failings at length in a recent posting, Personal Productivity: False Applications. It never occurred to me, as I was writing that piece, that Google was going to make my jaw hit the floor just a week later.
Although disappointed by Safari and IE (I quit using IE long before I moved to the Mac and I quit using Safari within a week of trying it out), I’ve never been entirely happy with FireFox. I’m a long time admirer of its plug-in ecosystem, which I believe shows the IT industry how to develop and manage software ecosystems, but Mozilla hasn’t been as innovative as it should have been.
I had no inkling that Google was even developing a browser, and I’d always assumed that it would one day just buy FireFox and be done with it.
Now that I’ve taken a look at Chrome, my opinion of Google has risen sharply. This is not yet-another-browser, this is a complete refresh of what a browser could and should be. From Chrome’s initial release, every indication is that Google gets it. It’s not so much that it gets browsing (which it does and that’s something in itself) but that it gets cloud computing.
Admittedly, I’m reading through the lines, but let’s first review Chrome in terms of features:
- It has an “omnibox” rather than a URL box plus a search box (as illustrated in the image above). Obviously sensible idea that’s been far too long in gestation. FireFox eat your heart out.
- It has a purpose designed full navigation page. FireFox take another bite at your heart.
- It’s fast. That’s considerate given that a well used browser can cripple an underconfigured PC all on its own.
- It does private surfing. That’s fine for those that value privacy.
- There’s actually a downloads page.
- It’s Open Source, which means that a software ecosystem is pretty much guaranteed to emerge.
All of these are impressive design ideas, but none of them are the reason that I think Chrome is going to dominate. There are two other features that are way more important that those above. They are:
- It has a shortcuts capability. Most commentators have missed this as an important feature, but actually its the bridge to Web 2.0 from the user’s perspective.
- It treats tabbed pages like objects. You can drag them around and use them to create their own windows.
This is the first browser that actually thinks in terms of making use of the whole screen and it’s this that convinces me that Google gets it.
The Start of Something Else
Chrome is the end of the browser and the beginning of the Cloud Client. These are quite different things. A Cloud Client is a flexible and configurable Interface in which an application can run. Whether the rest of the application is local or lives in the cloud is an option - and switchable. The user may not even know nor care. It doesn’t sound much like a browser does it?
I’ll be willing to bet that before long there will be customized front ends in Chrome for many Google Apps and for many other cloud-based apps. In fact, there will be.
Sadly for Mozilla, Chrome is going to decimate FireFox as soon as it has functional parity. The FireFox users will be the first to move. I can see no way that Microsoft will be able to compete either. Microsoft will be able to preserve IE market share to some degree and I’m sure it will slavishly copy some of what Google is doing, but the proprietary genes run too deeply in Redmond. I expect Google to innovate furiously and get a Chrome software ecosystem going very quickly. Microsoft will do something half-assed and get left behind.
I can even see corporations standardizing on Chrome, because they’ll be able to use it internally too.
This could be very big. In fact, it is very big.
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Great but new. Be careful about “new” things, I must agree it’s a well thought product by thousands of engineers, but no trackback yet, only 2 days of use. It seems to “users centric”, funny, useful, but, something is boring…why didn’t they get a mac verse now…?
I agree with you, they’re something like “dark force” (related to star wars maybe…;-), interesting features…But still too new for me. Let’s wait some months of daily use, and see what’s happen…
Kind regards,
L.
You are right, of course, that this is far too early to have any deep confidence in Chrome - and right now it doesn’t even have a Mac version and there are probably a few irritating holes in its functionality.
So to be more precise, what I’m saying here is that Google has got the concept right, and because Google is Google, it’s gonna be a success. What I’m not saying is drop your browser and get Chrome. The time to do that will be when Chrome is clearly ahead of the alternatives.
The future of Chrome looks good, provided some of the present is fixed, and the future arrives.
1. Outlandishly insecure installation, including the unprotected location and the failure to set NX bits where appropriate. Not a good way to get onto IT’s good guy list. And not a way to get the initial beta onto my machines.
2. The process per tab (vs IE 8’s approach of process per tab or a few similar tabs) burns memory. Not good in what you call “underconfigured PCs” (although much less a problem on modern machines than the wailing would suggest). And what is one example of a PC without a whole lot of memory: a virtualized machine with limited memory available, such as may become typical in the enterprise.
3. It appears the cookie cutter EULA is being fixed “as we speak” per Ars, but the initial version is a show stopper.
4. Privacy fears: Chrome user looks at a page on the company Intranet. Does Chrome do anything with that information that gets back to Google? How do we know?
5. HIPPA (can [a future release of] Chrome be used in a HIPPA-compliant environment? (I only know to ask the question; I don’t know the answer.)
The initial take-up is surely going to be in the consumer market. I’m guessing that it won’t get a footprint in the corporation until it meets a whole set of usage standards including security standards, that are now “de rigeur”. But let’s be realistic, this is still a beta product.
The HIPAA question is really about data security, since that’s where HIPAA bites. Browsers don’t compromise data security directly. Hence the real risk to data security is from malware infection. Once Google gets the security solid then, because of two features:
a) Warnings about malware infested web sites
b) Sandbox operation at the “tab” level
Chrome will have advantages over alternatives. However the other browsers will inevitably catch up. I suspect it will be HIPAA neutral once it’s a solid release.
having tested chrome yesterday I have to admit I am decidedly underwhlemed. While all the future facing features are useful and there are undoubtedly some nifty gimmicks I dont feel it has anything to blow away the competition.
OK, now I am really ready to use on my Mac. *waaaa*
That’s right. If you have a Mac (like me) you either run it in Parallels, or you wait for the Mac version.
there are so many advantages and features with Chrome, such as it’s speed, for example; now if only they would take care it’s quirky cookie management…
[...] to Google Chrome (if you’re not sure what relevance the Google Chrome browser has, read this and while you’re at it, it may make sense to read this too.) Ballmer seems to agree with me. [...]
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