Google Chrome

[drplokta]

There's something that no one is mentioning with reference to Google's new web browser. Which is that if you read what the comic says about the browser, that's not a web browser, it's an operating system.

It has a programming language (Javascript). It has a filesystem/database (Google Gears). It has process management. It has window management and display logic. It has permissions-based security. This is not Google trying to compete with Internet Explorer, it's Google trying to compete with Windows -- or rather, make Windows irrelevant.

Comments

[erikvolson.livejournal.com]

Not an OS, unless we can boot it on bare hardware.

If I need Windows to run Chrome, I'm not really competing with Windows.

[drplokta]

But you can't boot Windows on bare hardware, either -- you need a BIOS. You don't care which BIOS you have, because they all work and don't contribute significantly to the user experience, and so BIOS developers have no pricing power.

If Chrome does what it should, and your apps move into the cloud, then the OS will be in the same position as the BIOS is today -- you've got to have one, but you don't care which one you have, so you might as well have the cheapest one.

[ajshepherd.livejournal.com]

Lots of IFs, and this whole cloud thing seems to me like so much NetHype 3.0!

[andrewducker]

One programming language is, to put it mildly, not enough. And Javascript is certainly not good enough.

They'll be competing with Windows when OpenOffice (or equivalent) runs inside the browser. Oh, and World of Warcraft.

[drplokta]

Well, they're working pretty hard on the OpenOffice equivalent with Google Apps. I'll admit that graphic-intensive games are an issue.

One programming language may or may not be enough, but it's all you get on a Windows PC. The language, of course, is x86 or x64 machine code. Anything you write in any other language gets compiled to machine code. Google have software right now to compile Java code to Javascript, and there's no particular reason why the same couldn't be done for other high-level languages.

[andrewducker]

Google Apps are good for what they are - but they're still incredibly simple compared to Word. I do hope they improve though.

It'd be nice to have other high level languages compiling to JavaScript - but I'm not sure how efficient, in general, that double-compilation step will be. Compiling down to the new VM would be more efficient, but then you'd be constrained to only Google's browser.

And unless Google get massive traction for Chrome (like over 90%) it won't matter, as you won't be able to rely on people using it as their browser - you'll still have to deal with IE, Opera, Firefox, etc.

[armb.livejournal.com]

> Google have software right now to compile Java code to Javascript

And a compiler for Javascript to machine code (p. 15 of the comic), though how many platforms that will eventually work for I don't know. x86 would be enough for many people, but if it's going to be on Android, they might do iPhone and/or Windows Mobile too.

But Googling, it appears that the current Android Java VM (Dalvik) has no JIT compiler, so maybe Javascript won't either.

[armb.livejournal.com]

http://code.google.com/apis/v8/build.html says V8 (the Javascript engine) is available for ARM based Linux already.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/04/chrome_review/ starts "This is not just a browser: it is a vehicle for delivering web applications", and compares with Adobe AIR