Is the Future Chrome?
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What does Google know about web browsers that Microsoft and other browser makers don't? Plenty, if Chrome is any indication. Keep reading to find out the philosophy behind Google's new open source web browser, learn its advantages, and discover what is quite possibly the future of web browsing.
There's an old joke that keeps doing the rounds in Ireland. A tourist is hopelessly lost in the maze of unmarked byways. He's been driving around for hours trying to find the way to Cork, assisted only by a map that doesn't seem to show half the roads and a SatNav that keeps telling him to drive across muddy fields and along raging rivers. Eventually the frustration is too much, and he stops an ancient local to ask the way. "So" says the old man, thinking hard, "you say you want to go to Cork? Well now, if I were you I wouldn't start from here."
Although the connection between rural Ireland and a brand new software application might seem obscure, this is precisely the logic Google has applied to the new web browser that it released to widespread astonishment on September 1, 2008. Not content with cornering the search engine market, releasing a fully-featured webmail application and developing an online calendar, Google has now taken a long, cold look at the browser market and confirmed what many of us have suspected for some time: that all is not well.
The company has recognized that most browser designs are based on a ten-year-old map of the Internet, and decided not to start from there. Its goal instead has been to develop a browser optimized not just for showing web pages, but for running the applications that are central to Web 2.0: applications for watching and uploading videos and images, playing games, blogging and socializing. The result is Chrome: a stable, streamlined, multi-process browser in which security has been prioritized, speed boosted, and the whole thing released under an open source license.
It sounds impressive, and first reports suggest that it is. However, not everyone is delighted to see Google attempting to corner an even greater share of the Web than it had already. The timing of Chrome's release is significant, coming as it does during a period of unprecedented concern over the implications of Google's information gathering and privacy policies.
Such concerns were not mitigated by the small print of the original Chrome EULA, which seemed to claim that Google would have rights over literally all content that was "submitted, posted or displayed" in the browser. Surfers started to speculate how far this claim might go. Could the company, for example, assert its rights over content - an original image, let's say - that was developed on a local server and previewed in Chrome on a private network? Inevitably, perhaps, some people were quick to suspect a sinister side to all this, presuming it to be all part of Google's mission for world domination.
Whether Google has managed to allay such fears with its rapid apology and declaration that the license wording was a mistake remains to be seen. That announcement was backed up by a rewording of the offending section to the unambiguous "You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services." But this kind of carelessness on the company's part only provides ammunition for those queuing up to confer on it the title of New Great Satan of the software world.
The reality is that, while such claims of malicious intent are almost certainly exaggerated, Chrome does look set to have a radical impact on the Internet -- and Google won't need to resort to data theft to achieve this. The technology deployed in the new browser should go a long way towards assuring its success. There is also a high probability that Chrome will prompt a surge in interest in Google's other online applications, further reinforcing the company's ever-increasing market share. And the open-source license will ensure that problems, of whatever variety, are resolved swiftly, making Chrome attractive in ways that are simply not an option for Microsoft's market-leading Internet Explorer.
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