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Google's Chrome May Be Great, But Will It Matter?

by: Mathew Ingram September 02, 2008 | about stocks: ADBE / GOOG / MSFT    

Mathew Ingram

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As I said in my post yesterday about Google’s new Chrome browser (and as a number of others have also noted, including Kara Swisher and Mike Arrington) Google’s real target isn’t Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Exploder, or even Mozilla’s Firefox, but the desktop operating system market.

As Fred Wilson points out in his blog post on the topic, Google’s focus is the “cloud” — i.e., Web-based applications such as GMail and Google Docs and so on — and for an increasing number of people (including me), the browser is just a window through which they can use a variety of Web-based services.

So the point of Chrome is to turn the browser into a better interface for those Web services and apps, by using a faster, custom-made version of Javascript, by isolating each site in its own tab so that it can’t crash the whole browser, and so on. Although some of these features appear in IE 8 as well (including the separate sandbox-for-apps approach) Nick Carr is right when he says that Google is the only company for whom the cloud is a priority, and the only one with the resources to totally remake the browser into a Web operating system — continuing a trend that Netscape started back in the first bubble.

But just when we’re all starting to feel rosy and cheerful about the bright future of a Google-powered Web OS, along comes Hank Williams (not that Hank Williams) at Why Does Everything Suck, who points out that for most people, Internet Explorer is working just fine — and not only that, but a surprisingly large number of people are still using IE6, which is five years old, and wasn’t even that great to begin with. Do any of these people care that Google’s browser will run Web apps better than their existing browser? Unlikely (if they even use Web apps).

Meanwhile, Matthew Gertner of Mozilla says he isn’t convinced that the browser is the best place to run Web apps. He works for the Mozilla Prism project, which allows Web apps to run as separate, standalone windows that mimic desktop apps, an approach similar to the “rich Internet application” model that Adobe (ADBE) is pushing through its AIR app, and Microsoft is pushing with Silverlight.

There’s no question that the line between Web and desktop is blurring, and Chrome may well continue that process. But whether it is the ultimate answer — and whether the average Web user will even care — is still a pretty big question mark.

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This article has 6 comments:

  •  
    Sep 02 09:02 PM
    Um... I love this Chrome! The only problem it has though... it's still not compatible with Mac OS X, but it's still better than both internet explorer and firefox put together! The thing about Internet Explorer... it's that not-that-old-old-peopl... people still use it! They think FireFox and Safari and everything is worlds apart from internet explorer! Internet Explorer is slow, but that's just how they like it! They are "used" to it so they don't even want to get upgrades from IE6 and get the new one! Most of these people still don't want to change from XP to Vista because they are (again) afraid of change! Whatever... time will take care of this (hopefully).
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 03 01:36 AM
    Quite impressed with Chrome, and already using it more than IE 7 or Firefox. Love the look and the speed.
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 03 09:06 AM
    Try reading the 'conditions of use' agreement, then decide if you wnat to install still more google spyware on your computer.
    And the only improvements of Vista on XP were for the benefit of Microsoft, to give them more control of your computer.
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 03 02:16 PM
    Chrome adoption will be slow. Most people just don't care that much. In order to use Chrome you have to actively go out and find it, download it and choose to run it. Customers need someone continually reminding them to choose something else. This is Apple's advantage in having over 200 stores. People will need a compelling reason to switch. Perhaps in two years they will come up with one. In the meantime Firefox, Safari and IE will continue to develop. I wish them well but I doubt they'll take the world by storm.

    One interesting point is that Chrome shares the same open-source code base with Safari and with the browser used by Nokia and some others.
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 09 10:57 AM
    Yes, it matters.

    The interesting questions to me are not if Chrome (beta) is ready for prime time (it is not) or which established browser will suffer more (they all will.) What I find more interesting is that it appears to have all the trappings of a disruptive technology hiding in plain sight and that most techno-types don't recognize this because they are caught up in the techie details of this beta release.

    I wrote more about these ideas here:

    Google Chrome: Disruptive Technology
    faseidl.com/public/blo...

    Unpolished (Google) Chrome May Yet Sparkle
    faseidl.com/public/ite...
    Reply
  •  
    Oct 15 02:24 PM
    Chrome is great. I use it with this machine. My only thing is the wait to put it on my Linux box/ps3. I did find it myself so it will take time to catch on, and in that time Google can polish their chrome.
    Reply
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