What Google Chrome Already Means to the Web
I wrote a post over on Viget’s UX/strategery blog about how Chrome has already affected how web practitioners think about their work. I won’t repeat it over here, but it’s worth checking out over there. Here’s the excerpt:
Nearly everyone was surprised (not shocked, but surprised) over the weekend to find out that Google had been building its own browser for months now, named Chrome, slated for release today. The goal was ostensibly to rethink the typical web browser and build a new one from scratch designed to cater to the current and future generation of the web. When Google moves into an established space with a completely new product offering, you know they’re not messing around, and Chrome definitely deserves to be taken seriously. Even its announcement has already started to change the way we think about the web. Read on to find out how.
Read on over at Viget Advance.
If by “web”, you mean Windows users; then I guess a for a decent sized percentage of us, it means nothing.
I think Zeldman says it best: http://www.zeldman.com/2008/09/03/a-bug-in-google-chrome/
Right now, Chrome means very little — only time will tell. It is still buggy and only going to add to the list of browser compatibility issues most of us are already struggling with. While on some level it aims to get users off Internet Explorer; what it has done now is add itself to the list of issues the web has to deal with. It is more like IE than we realize.
Stop stirring the pot with short-sightedness, Martin.
I haven’t used Windows for two years now, and it’s still significant to me, and many others who can see how it influences things. It’s like my last blog post. If inspiration comes from everywhere, and knowledge comes from everywhere, influence and change comes from everywhere too.
Very little of the effort put into Chrome went into what displays on your screen, and I think we all should be able to recognize that any bugs on that side will inevitably improve.
The effort was put into the things you don’t see. I know you’re not a developer, but the architecture Google has created for Chrome is significantly different and certainly significant. If you read the linked post, that’s the core of my discussion.
Google cares about bugs, and those bugs will be worked out. Just because some software is buggy at release (and all software is) doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an impact. The overly-obvious example is the iPhone, which is buggy yet still significant and impactful. To claim that Chrome means nothing is either short-sighted or simply denial.
I think Svetlana Gladkova of Profy articulated my points better:
10 Myths about Google Chrome Browser