Thoughts on the Reaction to Google Chrome
Sep 10 2008
It has been a week since Google released their addition to the web browser market, Google Chrome. In case you’ve been in a coma for the last seven days or turned off the RSS feeds for any tech site on the internet (I wouldn’t blame you), Chrome is based on WebKit, the same spectacular rendering engine behind Safari, Adobe AIR, the Google Android browser, the iPhone, and a few other projects. Also, much like WebKit, Google is open sourcing almost all of the work that they’ve done on the browser, including new additions to the framework like their Javascript virtual machine called V8. They have also included a way for outside developers to contribute to the project via Google Chromium. This is to be commended in my view, because many other open source projects sponsored by big companies, do not allow developers to contribute to the product.
Google has released this product only for Windows users, for now, but they intend to release versions for Linux and Mac. This is to be expected of course, since WebKit is, after all, largely developed by Apple and we’ve seen ports of the engine ported to Linux in some upcoming projects. The real problem right now is that they’re trying to finalize UI (user interface) and integration designs, which, quite frankly, I don’t mind them taking their sweet time on. Too often, open source projects get way too excited about the idea of the project, rather than the people who will be using it, and, as a result, user interface in open source projects falls to the wayside. To be clear, this is purely my opinion, but I strongly believe that software is inspiring and worth spending my life studying, using, and making because of people, not in spite of them.
Now, I know that this post, so far, is off topic from my stated mission of helping you with your computer problems. I promise that I am working on a way to make many, many more tips available, in shorter write-ups, so you’ll see more content coming at you soon. However, I was so interested by Google’s efforts in Chrome and what it could mean for the rest of us, and was so frustrated by journalists’ coverage of the event, that I felt compelled to put my thoughts out there. So, here goes.
Following the advice of Henry McCracken, formerly of PC World and now founder of Technologizer, you can put almost anything in a list, so why not my contentions? Here are my problems with most news analyses of Google Chrome.
Tags: browsers, chrome, google, news, op-ed
Posted in Articles and Op Eds
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