Anyone that uses Google, (the qualifier for this is the fact you are human) will have noticed that beneath that iconic search bar is a new link, directing you to Google Chrome, a Google web browser that as with all things Google, comes with a hype that could perhaps be hugely unmerited.
Before we get to the ins and outs of its functionality, appearance etc, let's just take a look at the history of the web browser, and why Google would take this route.
The web browser was really born in the late 1980's, when a variety of technologies, most famous of course the WorldWideWeb, laid the foundation for the first web browser, which brought together a variety of existing and new software and hardware technologies. Web browsers communicate with Web servers primarily using HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) to fetch webpages, which are located by means of a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). In simple terms, they interpret the information that webmasters want you to see, and present it to you in the form of a webpage.
Historically, Microsofts' Internet Explorer has dominated the market, and currently still holds approximately 75% market share, Mozillas' Firefox pulls an impressive 20%, and the rest divided between the likes of Safari, K-Meleon, Flock, Konqueror, and Opera.
The market is packed with perfectly capable alternatives...ok, perhaps perfect capable is stretching their achievements, but there are many variations out there that offer you slightly different takes on the idea, and personally Firefox is my browser of choice, but thats largely due to the fact it is not IE.
So why a browser? Well, Google have a suite of Applications, Programs and Indentures (API's), most notably Google Maps, Android, Google Earth, and Gears, in addition of course to their search services. Could Google be aiming to unify their API's with Chrome? This is an opinion I've seen and heard touted about the internet, but I feel there is a far bigger picture here.
Google Chrome may appear to have its teeth cut for a battle with Internet Explorer, but the Microsoft product that Google is ultimately setting its itself up to destroy is the Windows operating system. In reality, the search titan hopes that its browser, in the short term, will simply make it easier for businesses to deploy their online applications.
Anyway, that's one for the future, right now we have the issue of where Google Chrome fits in to the current landscape, and my suggestion is that we tuck it discreetly behind a bush and forget about it for the foreseeable future. With it being Google, that may prove to be more difficult than it should be, but in the core elements of its functionality it offers nothing new, nothing exciting, and certainly nothing to challenge Firefox for my attention.
Google's first major publicity of Chrome came in the form of a 38-page comic that resembled the in-flight instructions of a plane more than it did the release of a major weapon in Google's considerable armoury. Suffice to say Marvel will sleep easy. The sedate nature of its release suggests Google really aren't all that bothered about the success of this project, at least not in the near future, and were really just hoping for a little bit of the limelight following Yahoo's protracted kissing and cuddling with Microsoft before their acrimonious fall-out and subsequent fisticuffs and chest-pumping. Google love a headline, if they were a film star they'd surely become Scientologists and marry some failed actress from Dawsons Creek, but where they normally maneuver that attention well, here I feel they fail on the basic principle of the product letting them down.
They have introduced something called an Omnibox, which is just the search bar wearing a tutu, and fails miserably as a nonpartisan addition to the browser. People have the option with most other browsers of selecting home page etc, but this bar doubles as a search engine on ... you've guessed it, Google. The merging of the address bar and search bar gives Google too much control over navigation. It separates companies and website operators from their website addresses and brands. Companies spend heavily to establish and maintain brands. Google has just imposed itself between consumers and businesses. Direct navigation has now become proprietary search, whereby Google uses its discretion to filter out web addresses and domains that it deems less relevant. I object heavily to this and see it as no less than bullying, so for this alone I have boycotted the browser, but more poignantly, they have thus far failed to release a Beta version for the Mac. As a Mac user i find this rather insulting, and as an opponent of Microsoft and every filthy moral they stand for I am infuriated.
I shall leave it at this: as a writer/consumer this story is fun, it sometimes even shakes hands with endearment, but as an employee of a web development company, and having test-driven it on a PC, I am more excited by the recession thats' somewhat fallaciously drowning the spirit of a perpetually melancholic UK. Chrome will not affect things for my employers within the next 3 years at least, and I predict that it probably never will.
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