I'm Michael Suodenjoki - a software engineer living in Kgs. Lyngby, north of Copenhagen, Denmark. This is my personal site containing my blog, photos, articles and main interests.

Start > News Archive 2008 > Universal Desktop #3 | 

Updated 2011.01.23 15:37 +0100 | 

 

Universal Desktop #3

Tuesday September 2nd, 2008

As is probably no surprise Google has today launched its new Google Chrome browser - albeit in beta mode.

Google Chrome Beta

Previous installments:

As my previous installments on the Universal Desktop #1 and #2 has illustrated Google is now entering the battle for the desktop. This time of course from the "browser" side of the war.

It will be very interesting to see whether Google really can offer the features of the desktop via the browser. As this front is opening from the browser side of the war the single essential element controlling this front is the available standards. If there were no standards, there would not be any common understanding on how to supply content, and subsequently "application" features, though the Internet.

It is my feeling that the current standards behind the web can only go so far - it is somewhat limited, and will as such probably not be enough for offering full desktop features. I'm not sure that I have a clear list of these either (see #2 for some ideas). But I do believe Google in their 3-5 year plan has a pretty good understanding of this. Also we will most likely see new standards that will capture these missing features.

Because there are standards, we see different compeeting implementations for it - but there is not much room for movement. How much difference are there really between the browsers?

You can so-to-speak "only" offer some different user experiences, e.g. Google Chromes new tab UI, performance improvements etc (feature list), but these actually plays a very important role for users in the end.  It is interesting to observe that these UX differences are not really subject for standardization itself - which currently explains why different users using different browsers have different experiences. This also apply to the difference between the features offered by traditional desktop operating systems.

Those who actually use different browsers (and see the differences) are mostly (web) developers. Normal end-users are sticking to one browser and will only switch to another browser if the user-experience is substantially better, e.g. better performance, more secure, comply better to standards etc. This is where Google Chrome sets in with its first battleground movements.

PS. And it may come with a price - e.g. would you be able to avoid Google ads with the Google browser?

Illustrates this website in the Google Chrome browser.

Read more:

Updated September 2nd, 2008: Reactions to chrome:

Updated September 29th, 2008:

All installments - the series of blogposts about the Universal Desktop: