Every blog had posted about Google Chrome yesterday. So much text about single cute comic. Download came and every blog posted again (up to five times per blog) about that.
I had recently been accused of being un-cynical (contrary to my tagline). So here is my cynical thought on subject - Chrome doesn’t matter today and is not going to matter for some time.
Why? Read on.
Saturation
Browser market is extremely saturated. It’s an area where two products is already close to “too many”. Currently we have :
- Internet Explorer for everyone;
- Firefox for those who don’t want to be everyone and those after extensions;
- Firefox forks for those who want it without Firefox part;
- Opera for those who need something that works and does a lot of stuff without much trouble;
- obscure mods of everything abovementioned for those who want strange things.
Users want single browser. I am using Firefox a bit lately, mostly for Firebug (because of this blog). When browsing in it I become 3-4 times slower than usual. My brain is simply wired to Opera after all those years. Thought of third browser plain scares me - and I am ancient-level power user.
Making users switch is long and painful process. It takes years and you still have huge white areas on your conquest maps after that.
Tech is not success
There is very cool tech inside of Chrome. I am very impressed with it - at least for being fresh thoughts.
But who cares? New tech is not making other browsers obsolete. They still work fine. And with current features copy-pasting rate between browsers they are probably all going to offer similar stuff even before Chrome reaches usable level.
By the way - lots of people seem to ignore that it is 0.2.149.27 version. And lacks everything but most basic functions.
Chrome is not a browser
May look like it, may work like it… But in reality Chrome is client for online applications. It is designed as one and made as one. It is close to being browser but very different at the same time.
Does same things chasing different goals.
Overall
Google Chrome will matter for one reason - Google part of it. If it had tagline it could be “Made for future”. It’s cool to see bit of future but it takes years to get there.
Home&download page http://www.google.com/chrome
Joshua #
Rarst #
Lucas #
Rarst #
Joshua #
CypherHackz #
Rarst #
Hussein #
Rarst #
MK #
Joshua #
Rarst #
Ben #
Rarst #
Joshua #
Rarst #
Joshua #
Rarst #
Joshua #
Rarst #
Joshua #
Ky #
Rarst #
Ky #
Adrian #
Rarst #
Run web app in dedicated window of Firefox or Chrome | Rarst.net #
Piotr Krzyzek #
Shudogg #
Rarst #