Google Chrome
It has been dubbed the first true Web 2.0 browser for its simplicity, speed and functionality. Very few bells & whistles come with it. So it can be a good & bad thing as well.
For those who prefer a no-frills experience of the web it is just the thing for you. However if you are like the tech-geek/gurus out there that can’t function without that 2000 plugins residing on their Firefox or IE it is like going to a buffet with only fried rice and curry chicken being the only dishes available.
With that said, this is after all a beta release, which means that there will be further enhancements, tweaks and bug fixes to address before it officially becomes v1.0. A good example would be Chrome does not come with a bookmark manager; something I hope will be available come v1.0.
I have been voicing it around the office like an Italian waiter who hasn’t gotten his tip that there is no built in RSS reader like IE or Firefox which has an add-on for it. My run around it is to put my feeds on Google Reader and just live with it for now. Why am I giving so much lee way for the new kid on the block while I did not buy into the whole Firefox coup? Perhaps I have a little more faith in Google’s long term plan of things to come.
In a comic book format, Google explains the technical background of the browser and the philosophy of “We don’t want to interrupt anything the user is trying to do. If you can just ignore the browser, we’ve done a good job.” That line alone speaks volumes on the intent of the search giant. The browser does reflect their ideals of putting content first and foremost like the search engine. Everything else is just a tool to the larger purpose. I love that idealism!
What perhaps you don’t know is what happens under the hood. Chrome appears to be designed in great parts to run AJAX and Web 2.0 applications. It has been built from scratch in which the browser is the front-end to Web-base applications and services which are increasingly used in businesses. Google has chosen the open-source WebKit as the rendering engine and has built its own virtual engine called V8 to run JavaScript faster, stable & more secure. Another important addition is Google Gears which ties together Web-base apps to your hard disk.
What this essentially does is it makes the browser run Web-base apps just like a client-base application. This means Google is able to run Google Docs offline with the interactivity & stability you are accustomed to with MS Office. So in essence it does not actually compete with IE per se but MS Office instead. That is an even bigger threat than just a browser war if you ask me!
In a nutshell Chrome is an interesting glimpse at what future computing potentially could become. If this train of thought/development prevails, perhaps we can be freed from the shackles of windows platform restrictions once and for all … ok I’m getting ahead of myself but one can only dream!
