Another Day, Another Browser

Am I the only person totally unbuzzed about Google Chrome? Yes, from its feature list it sounds like a x.0 upgrade over current iterations of Firefox/IE, but I can”t help feeling Google are throwing their hat into a market thats already relatively saturated; and in so doing are totally missing the point of their mission.

From a user perspective, the whole purpose of web-based computing is to move in a direction where local software is no longer important. Any browser that is web-standards compliant should be able to effectively render and handle internet applications; and since the functionality users are looking for is delivered by the site, and not the environment in which the site is rendered, I don”t believe that there is huge demand for another browser. The real demand is for the underlying technology for developers to deliver richer, more functional web-apps. By the nature of the web, these next generation of web applications will have to be delivered by building on open standards (or at least non-browser specific plugins), which all browsers support. So adding a Google Browser to the mix really won”t help this cause.

Their real reason is to help tie people into their search service, and quite possibly to help them better track user behaviour for ad targetting purposes (on which subject, is nobody perturbed about using a browser provided by DoubleClick?!)

For the record, I use Camino… Which currently holds 0.05% of the browser market. Its awesome - it has very few “features” but is snappy and renders pages correctly. Simple. Download it at www.caminobrowser.org