So our friendly neighbourhood giant has come out with a browser. They've created a comic book, that claims oh-so-many-wonderful-stuff, but to the average joe like me, that's just techie speech for saying it's 'rock-solid'.
From a layman's point of view, something more insiduous is happening here...
By appealing to the techie developers, it helps drive a community, and we've all seen what rabbid communities can do to drive fashion i-want products. Keeping the code accessible helps in the process, and more open-developers = more users (= more adverts) = more revenue?
This is never about the browser war. People like to rave about the burning godzilla browser, but the most useful function made famous out of it is already a commonplace everywhere - the tab. Again, the community likes to rave on about it because of the 'oh i discovered the browser first among my friends and I have to install it on everyone else's computer, 'cos that makes me cool' mentality.
I'm not really sure how modern IT industry works these days, but it all seem to be about market share. As long as a lot of people are using it, the money making opportunist will come looking for you. You don't even need to do anything about generating revenue, people will pay you to help them make more money!
Hence, it seems as though this supposed 'browser' seems to be an experiment to a greater plan. Monitoring tab resources, improving memory efficiency, maximising potential for it in sync with today's computer users... OS takeover anyone?
Think about it. If they manage to build a browser that's powerful enough to run any software and application, and do so efficiently, wouldn't it be so much more convenient to just run it through the 'chrome', since that's what I'm going to use all the time anyway?
The closet geek wetdream for everyone I'm sure is for OS compatibility. With such a do-it-all browser, the potential is endless. Sure, the slugfest between Mac and MS can carry on, while all glooggle needs to do is to provide a platform that seeks to integrate the two.
So bye bye word processors, media players, file managers, I'll just do it all in my chrome, thank you. And by keeping it open source, they don't even need to build it. Some guy just needs to tap on its potential and you have ready-made consumer driven products on your platform!
Naysayers may say, 'but the gaming community will never be satisfied'. Well, nobody ever said they're making an OS. Yet. Leeching it doesn't count. Plus, computer gaming are fighting a different front, as the trend to shift from PC to console continues. And it's true, the gaming community will never be satisfied, so let them build their own games on the platform!
Based on their past projects, they've flirted with desktops (I still miss the deskbar), and they claim to never make a browser of their own. Who's saying they're making a browser now? This is just a front for greater things to come.
Labels: FFT (Food for thought), google chrome
