Google Chrome

If you're like me, living with a programmer, you've heard nothing but excitement about the new Google Chrome browser that came out last week (and was immediately downloaded and installed as the default browser on all 3 home computers). I, not being a technologist, decided to give it a try, while remaining cautiously optimistic.

Google itself says the following: "We realized that the Web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications, and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for Web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build." Now, call me naive, but wasn't that half the point of Mozilla Firefox? This statement also pokes at me for a reason that I find hard to name. I think it's because, on the whole, I am not looking for yet another application that does magic tricks, but something useful. A tool. That's what technology is at its core: the use of tools to accomplish something more efficiently than you would be able to without it. And yes, this is a wonderful research tool... but I fail to see what makes it better than other browsers. Except, of course, that it bears the Google logo, and comes with its own comic strip.

While I appreciate the ground-up approach that Google has taken in creating Chrome, the application, from my standpoint, is pretty much the same as Firefox or the new IE or Safari. I'm proficient in technology, as much as one can be without knowing any programming languages (I've been told that HTML, as a markup language, doesn't count). I surf the web, I check my email constantly, I play an MMORPG, I can hook up and sometimes even troubleshoot a CPU. And it doesn't look very much different to me than the other browsers. I don't really have a problem with the look of it... I understand that aesthetics play a large part in usability when it comes to the common computer user. But there are so many browsers out there already. Why do we need another one?

What makes me think is this: Since I've known the aforementioned programmer, all I've ever heard about Microsoft is that it's a large, evil, monopolistic corporation with no soul, mostly because the company has a tendency to market anything and everything with the MS name and logo on it. But, look around any programmer's office, and you'll see half a dozen items emblazoned with "Google" or "I'm Feeling Lucky!". The two corporations may market themselves in different ways, but the names are equally (or almost as) well-known to the general computer-using public. The difference, I am told, is that Google's products work well, and the people who create them take pride in what they do (apparently Mr. Gates has never ever cared, and just happened to be in the right place at the right time?). Such is the trust that people place in this corporation that they will uproot their own beliefs (this is a guy who started a university-wide campaign to get Mozilla Firefox into the computer labs at Rutgers) and follow the pack to throw away MF and install Chrome, as the default browser, within hours of its release. Google is king! Google is wonderful! Chrome forever!

To this, I feel I must remind the programmers of the world... that's how Microsoft started out, too.