Last month Google released its Chrome browser to the public and as usual it made a lot of PR noise (and a comic book) and got lots of favorable reviews

Google released its Chrome browser to the world about a month ago. It made a lot of PR noise, a comic book, and squeezed some outrageously favorable remarks from critics.

“When combined with Gears, which allows for offline access, Chrome is nothing less than a full on desktop operating system that will compete head on with Windows. “

Michael Arrington in “Meet Chrome, Google’s Windows Killer” (TechCrunch)

A month later, is Google Chrome even close to the the expectations set on its launch?
Read about it Cloud Avenue…

Update October 21th, 2008:

Be sure to read the discussion on the comments section at CloudAve and Krishnan’s response post…

Related stories:

• On Google Chrome and The Future of Cloud Computing
• Is Google Replacing My OS Again?!

Tags: Chrome, GOOG, Google, operating system

I’ve received a lot of good feedback for my initial post about Chrome comparing its “Microsoft Killer” hype to the GTalk (now mostly defunct) launch a few years ago.

However, I’ve also heard from several folks who disagree (like Asaf for example).
The main point of the Chrome supporters is that advanced AJAX execution capabilities, coupled with Google Gears offlining capabilities and bundled in a browser provides a platform for next-gen web cloud applications that can seamlessly work online and offline.

The thing is, that no matter how much you optimize your browser’s rendering and JavaScript capabilities, underneath it all our entire web technology still based on old (even ancient in Internet terms) standards set almost a decade ago by W3C - a now defunct organization that is failing to keep up with the rate of technological changes.
Can you really believe that the future is in technology standards set by W3C and updated once, maybe twice a decade?!

It’s W3C’s inability to keep up that is driving companies to develop their own proprietary standards to lead today’s technological trends - Adobe with Flex and Air and Microsoft with Silverlight.

And maybe we’re going towards a browser-less future were we have AIR\Silverlight cloud enabled applications running on our OS?

The point is, taking Apple’s rendering code (apparently, not even the latest build) and putting it inside a featureless window while adding some optimized JavaScript VM is far from being innovative and light years away from the revolutionary expectations that we could hear about before and during the Chrome launch. Adding a few more horses to pull your carriage around doesn’t turn it into a car…

But hey, we’ve had the same story with a boring featureless (sorry, plain and simple) chat program a few years ago

Tags: Chrome, GOOG, Google, GTalk

It seems like Google is making comic books these days. Its also announcing a new browser - Chrome - which we haven’t and know nothing about except the fact that it’s (obviously, an antitrust waiting to happen?) bundled with Google Gears. This of course, does not prevent Michael Arrington from TechCrunch of making outrageous claims calling it a “Windows Killer”:

When combined with Gears, which allows for offline access, Chrome is nothing less than a full on desktop operating system that will compete head on with Windows.

I’ve heard about Google’s Window-Killing abilities before….  where was that?  ah! right! scrolling all the way back to August 2005 where a new Google App is just about to revolutionize the way we communicate, the world, and the very fabric of the universe:

keith.teare: “It’s almost as if Google is implementing the features Microsoft has announced for Longhorn - Sidebar; voice calls inside IM, RSS integration - but doing it ahead of Microsoft, by about 12 months.

A Google layer between Users and the OS.

Rendering the OS a commodity

GTalk… remember GTalk? Google killed Vista with GTalk and will now kill Microsoft entirety thanks to coupling Google Gears to a JavaScript engine (not just any engine… an optimized one!)

And on a more serious note - Google’s business is all about AdSense.
It’s entire products line revolves around AdSense and anything that doesn’t help its business grow - dies. Even Android, under all the open-source and Apple hating PR, it about serving ads to mobiles.
Having said that, I wonder where Chrome fits in…

Tags: Android, Chrome, GOOG, Google, Michael Arrington, Microsoft, operating system, Vista, Windows