I’m writing this post in Google Chrome. Google’s beta release of the Google Web Browser. It took me some time to download and install Chrome because the download site is obviously swamped mere hours/minutes past it’s “exciting” launch.

First impressions? Very clean and simple. The Chrome is almost not there.
And it’s fast. It renders pages very fast. Very fast. Faster than anything I’ve used before. Wordpress is running nicely, the embedded Gears and the Javascript optimisations probably have a huge benefit for Wordpress sites due to the heavy use of Javascript techniques used in it. And Gmail? Scorching performance.

So far, the performance is the killer USP.

No rendering issues on any sites I’ve tried so far.

The big drawback? Lack of features. I guess it took Firefox quite some time to get to the point that I have my perfect profile, with use of firebug, HTML validator etc. But it is so simple and clean. To quote page 24 of the comic (which I can’t find a good way to deeplink, so won’t):

 

We don’t want to interrupt anything the user is trying to do. If you can just ignore the browser we’ve done a good job. 

 
They have done a good job. The browser is not there, in a way that Firefox and IE7 sadly are.

The question for me earlier today was Why? Dare says it’s because they want to drive the web forward, which is backed up by their comic and what they say on their blogs and posts and brochure pages. They live and die by the web. They are producing some of the best, or most influential at least, web based applications. And their ability to develop these and move them forward is stifled by the pace of browser development in IE, Firefox and other products.

The pages in the comic complaining about “Speed Limits” on the web etc seem to back this up. For them, the claimed point of Chrome is to show people what a fresh look at the web could be. Faster. More powerful. Safer. Better. More driven by the Google Ethos and approach to building great, inovative products that push the industry forward in big jumps.

Of course, not everyone buys into this. Microsoft Watch see it as a cynical thing. Killing their partners.  Some kind of anti-trust, Google doing evil, making the wrong move for a fair market etc.

I don’t think I buy into that.

Earlier today, my thoughts ran on the lines of, this is a bad idea and it won’t work. According to Google’s figures, 40% of their users are on IE6, 40% on IE7 and 16% on firefox. Talking to colleagues at work, who are all internet developers. Geeks. The people who live on the web as much as Google, a lot of them use IE because it’s on their PC and it works. They don’t want or need anything more. That 16% Firefox figure comes from Firefox being the best thing on Linux. From Firefox being the best non-Microsoft solution (for the religious out there). And being pretty damn good for customisation. But, I would hazard the opinion that the market is not 100%. There is a significant portion of that market that is not, and never will be, up for grabs.

It’s my family, they’ll only use what’s on their desktop. They don’t know or care why firefox might be better for me to use. It’s not going to change them using IE because it’s there. Microsoft’s bundling of IE was clearly anit-competitive black had because of this. And the number of corporate environments with lock downs that allow the net, or their intranet, but only via IE as it’s part of their OS and can be locked down as such.

So, that makes Firefoxes market share bigger. So Chrome is competing with maybe the 16% Firefox marketshare, and 10% of the IE share that hasn’t moved but could. And the niche things.

So, is Chrome really about forcing inovation? It’ll force it in that niche away from IE, and Microsoft might pull along. But only if it’s really good. I didn’t beleive I’d use it for more than 10 minutes. Now, having used it for a little while, I plan to install it at work too. And live with it for a while. It’s that good. In beta 1. With very few features.

And it’s so fast. Firefox 3 was a lot faster than Firefox 2. If Chrome had come out before FF3, I may never have installed FF3. Because it’s so fast. CLEARLY faster than FF3. Which when I first switched to from FF2 felt so much faster. And when I went back to FF2 on an older machine I hadn’t upgraded it was painful. Will I hurt in Firefox3 at work in the morning?

So Firefox needs to start worying. It needs to look at V8. It needs to pull some of this stuff in and catch up.

Chrome could get a good fast uptake and make a very significant dint into that 16%.

And it doesn’t have adBlock.

Ah, now I’m suspicious. Of that 16% marketshare that firefox has, how many users do you think have adBlock or GreaseMonkey or another script that takes that crap off the web? That removes Googles Ad revenue stream? I’ve not seen an advert on the internet since I switched to Firefox with early versions of adBlock. And I use the web a lot. And I know that most Firefox users have something like adBlock running.

So is it about revenue? Chrome is Open. I assume it will have/does have plugin support. Will adBlock for Chrome come? Or will Google keep that out of it’s ecosystem? Is Chrome about revenue? Switch people to Chrome, remove adblock, get the chance to show people more ads. In return for faster, safer browsing with richer applications.

(I’ve just noticed my CPU pegged at about 30% on task manager. I’ve checked the task manager in Chrome. Shockwave was eating CPU. I’ve killed the tabs with Shockwave in, and now the browser is a ghost in my system eating no resources at all. Neat.)

But, Chrome is about inovation we’re told. Yet doesn’t support XUL, Mozilla’s XHTML + Rich GUI markup language. That is something I thought would be a great thing to see grow. That could give the real edge to these rich applications that Google want Chrome to enable. I assume it’s lacking due to the use of webkit. But, with v8 powered XUL, the things you could build would be awesome.

It’s going to be a case of time will tell I assume. I think it looks positive. This morning when I heard the news, I couldn’t see the point. The competition (Firefox, Safari and Opera) are too far ahead. Google too far behind. Now I’ve used the “vision”, the speed, cleanliness and disruptive new thinking are converting me.

Chrome + Gears + Google’s web applications could be a massive boost in creativity, development and forward motion that the web as an operating system/platform for the future of computing really needs.

Popularity: 45% [?]

This is version 2 of this entry and was posted 4 months ago on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 at 8:41 pm and is filed under Applications & Frameworks, Browsers, Chrome, Opinion, Programming Tools. It's popularity ranking is Popularity: 45% [?]. It has been tagged with Browsers, chrome, google, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. You can see changes since the last version here.