It's interesting to speculate why. Of course, one possibility is that someone in the hydra-headed Googleplex just started this as their 20% project and it got released.
Or maybe it's just a defensive move to protect web-standards (a Google "complement") against the possible encroachment by proprietory RIA front-ends like Flash and Silverlight? But why not just invest in Firefox or Webkit? Is this just Google's way of doing that? Are they trying to disuade too much fragmentation between these other open-source contenders?
I still believe Internet Explorer is a total waste of time, money, energy and focus for Microsoft. Why wouldn't an "own brand" browser be similarly one for Google?
Not sure ... let's see if they do anything clever with it.
Update : Dare Obasanjo nails an important point :
Will ship with Google Gears built-in
This pushes the Gears offline caching standard (against Mozilla's own rival) and is therefore an indirect attack on the desktop as offline application platform.
Dare's bonus question :
Am I the only one that thinks that Google is beginning to fight too many wars on too many fronts.
I half agree. To me, the most interesting question about Google today is whether, through their 20% time, and their ready engagement of open internet culture, and having pots of money to spare, they've created a genuinely new, decentralized type of company structure, one which is capable of innovating more products and fighting on more fronts at the same time, than a traditional, more top-down, organization.
I'm not wholly convinced they have. But then I'm not wholly convinced they haven't, either. I'm keeping an open mind. But if we see a few more of these bets become successful and profitable, that may signal a Google which is almost unbeatable by more conventional software companies.
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7 comments:
Looking at their (technical) reasons for doing it (e.g. sandboxing tabs to stop one page taking over the whole browser) I guess this is a logical extension/parallel to efforts such as gOS and Fluid. Once the browser replaces the OS, process-handling and management becomes a lot more important. Grouped tabs in IE8 are a start, but there's a long way to go, and some big wheels to re-invent.
Not seen Chrome yet, so not sure where it stands in terms of being a "general" browser, though. i.e. Does it *add* better JS-heavy stuff, or does it focus on it to the detriment of other features, such as cookie-editing, bookmarking, search bars etc?
For all their rhetoric about using web-apps all day, every day, I'd love to know just how many people working at Google actually use IE...
They already lost 2 wars: Google Video (although they bought you tube) and Orkut.
Scribe : Good point about the browser having to become serious about OS style infrastructure. Can we even imagine multi-tasking processor-per-tab?
Frank : I wouldn't write off Orkut quite yet ... it's massive here, and when OpenSocial really gets going I bet it's still going to be a serious Yasn-as-platform
Not worth much, but as someone who is technically challenged, Chrome passed the test: "F@$! it, I'm not going to screw with this!" It's easy to set up, seems to block pop ups better than Firefox. I installed Firefox 3 and the Clusty toolbar wasn't compatible. Using that search engine is an affectation, but I do like it. So in Chrome I can set it as my default browser. There are some features handy in Firefox, the BBC headlines and the highlighter that Chrome doesn't have. The spellcheck doesn't really work in Chrome and that for me is the main reason I probably won't use it as my default browser.
The spell check seems to work in Chrome. Not sure what I was doing wrong before. So maybe I will stay with Chrome after all.
Off topic to your main points, but Chrome is fast. There are some glitches, but I've been amazed that the improved speed is a reason I want to keep using it.
Thanks John,
I need to play with it, need to clear some space on my machine first though ... also the first thing I want to play with is Mozilla's Ubiquity from the Humanized / Enso guys ... that will probably keep me in Firefox for a while.,
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