Jeremiah Owyang over at Web-Strategist threw out some interesting ideas about what Google's new Chrome browser means. I tried to extend upon what he writes by looking at the implications that this will have - dependent upon how you interact with Google.
Over the US Labor day holiday, the beans were finally spilled on one of the best kept secrets of the past few years. Despite public comments to the contrary, Google has been working on their own internally developed browser. The resulting Google Chrome Browser has important repercussions for everyone. It is just that it is different depending on who you are.
You are Apple;
This means that if it were not enough of a conflict of interest (Iphone VS Google's Android) to have Google CEO Eric Schmidt sit on your board - It is now. Look for Schmidt to resign sometime in the next six months.
If you are Microsoft;
This means that if you ever considered making Internet Explorer open source in the past, now is the time... You can not afford to wait, not even another minute. Expect Microsoft to make Vaporware like noise over the next few months about cloud widgets to give IE closer ties to cloud based initiatives.
If you are Yahoo;
In a post way back in January we wrote about some of what Yhoo would need to do to be relevant. Now you can add to this list, you need to buy Mozilla.
If you are Firefox;
Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer...yes continue with your Google revenue deal, but learn how to monetize your Browser outside of a paid search deal. Leverage your large user base to form "spin-off" type "power of the crowd" businesses. Note to Firefox, hey you guys ARE a social network...you just haven't figured that out yet.
If you are Sun;
Realize that Java is even less relevant every day. First we kicked you out of client side computing because you were a resource hog. Realize that Java will now continue to be less and less relevant on the Server. What a waste of a good company... McNealy must have got hit in the head with one to many hockey pucks.
If you are a social network;
In a previous post, we talked about how that in the future your "social networks" would follow along with you in the browser. Truth be told, we thought it would be Facebook, or even more likely Firefox that would lead in this initiative. So if you are a social network, you need to know now Chrome is the first step in a series of moves that will make it unnecessary for your peeeps to ever visit your site (directly) again.
If you are an application developer;
Life used to be simple, eh? You knew that you should be developing applications for Windows, because that is where the 100's of millions of users were. Fast forward, and now you need to choose what platforms to support, and when. Of course it makes sense to develop for Windows still, but Apple now has a mass of millions of Mac OSx users, and if it a browser based app, write once for Safari, and it should work without much adaptation on the Iphone. There are over a billion cell phones in use world wide, however every phone requires writing to separately (yes even all those different flavors of Java are different phone to phone. Suddenly with Android coming, and a matching desktop browser you need to be here.
Lastly if you are a consumer;
There is always a bottleneck somewhere ... Think back 5-10 years ago, before what we now refer to broadband... Dial up was painffulllllyy slow, and when you tried to browse, the bottleneck was in your "last mile" connectivity. Once you got broadband, the lag time in reaching a site was likely in your PC (not enough ram, slow processor, etc). Before either of those issues though it was the software that was not "smart" enough to keep up with the ever faster CPU's being created.
Look for Chrome to optimize all these new "cloud" based application initiatives like Google Gears, etc. This is just another nail in the coffin for desktop based computing. In 10 years, likely 90%+ of your applications will reside somewhere outside of your home or workplace - but certainly not on your desktop.
What does it mean to you? Why not leave YOUR comment? Shy? Tweet Me your answer.
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8 comments:
Mmmmm, food for thought there. Do you think this browser might slowly evolve into an operating system?
People smarter then me use that term to describe Chrome (Techcrunch used it in their description), I do not ever see a browser being an operating system. But I believe it will make people look more and more at the Internet itself as an operating system.
andy...good stuff. remote computing will happen. these things take time. longer than we think generally.
this is another interation of the technology that will eventually replace fat pc's with dumb, browser driven devices that connect to the cloud for all relevant resources.
in 20 years, wired lan's will be history, everyone will connect into their service provider via some wimax technology (30 miles @ 30meg).
businesses don't need to be in the business of managing computing networks in their offices. they need to manage their core business. all relevant resources for business will be in the data center. we will use a secure remote connection to gain access. the computing reources in the data center will be fungible. compute resources will be available in the cloud for any place, any time, always maintained connectivity.
Thanks for extending the conversation, good breakout by role.
Just a thought !! what happens to all those Malware and Virus Developers....with Chrome's Sandbox idea and IE's Private Browsing tool, I believe those guys have to work really hard to get into computers...
Amazing breakup for all stakeholders
Additionally I would say that Microsoft needs to analyze the impact on Windows, not just IE. This is no longer about browser but about the an entire marketplace spread between desktop, mobile and web.
Google Chrome has faster JavaScript VM, better memory management, better Windows UI rendering, faster text layout and rendering, and intelligent page navigation in comparison to other more widely adopted browsers. When combined with Google Gears technology, this is as close as you can get to replicating the desktop experience with web applications
More details on my blog
http://sachendra.wordpress.com/2008/09/03/googles-chrome-is-aimed-at-windows-not-ie/
Interesting views for each category, Andy.
I think Chrome is the ultimate browser for computer nerds. They seem to focus the attention on technical aspects, as depicted in the comic presentation, so it's a bit hard for me to believe that Google has an early plan to directly get a big chunk of the market.
Anyway, the comic book presents so nicely the cool features, that you feel a sudden urge to install it and afterwards it can become addictive. That's what I did. :)
Andy,
While I agree that long-term Microsoft will suffer, I think Mozilla will lose more users in the short-term u less they act quickly and decisively. The vast majority of people who are going to move off of IE, have moved off of IE and are far more willing to try something new.
For example it took me years to try Firefox, but moved to Flock as soon as I heard a bout it.
It will be interesting to watch how Chrome does, I'm sure I will eventually try it out.
One of the issues that is always overlooked when we discuss cloud based computing is that a large part of the world has slow, unreliable internet connections.
It's getting better, but there is still a long ways to go.
Doug
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