Phine Solutions web work notes

Google released Chrome yesterday, a new web browser, currently available for Windows XP only.

It is very simple to install and It is very fast based on my experience. I haven’t tried many sites though. So there are probably sites that don’t play well with Chrome. Chrome will not have a bookmark if you don’t import one from Firefox or IE. And also, I can’t use a drop down to see the sites I used to visit from the address bar (or so called omnibox in Chrome), which I think is a big inconvenience. However, upon opening a new tab, a bunch of sites that I have visited will be there to provide some kind shortcuts to the sites that I used to visit.

It is probably still early to say how dominant (or how irrelevant) Chrome will be in the future but it will certainly change the way people access the Internet. I am already using Chrome for my GMail, Google Reader and some other Google apps with Firefox opened for other web browsing and development work. When there are more and more browser based apps available, Chrome may be the perfect choice to run those heavy JavaScript sites.

I think besides the fresh look and some usability innovations of this new browser, the key is its open source root. Looks like the desktop app itself is on a good start, now the next thing is to extend it into other territories like mobile and smart devices, which is quite an open field to get into.

In the Desktop environment I think it is still too early to tell how long it will take to be adopted by the mainstream, considering 20-25% of the web users are still using IE6 today. Google might have to bundle Chrome with some really great browser apps to get it replace IE on people’s Windows desktop. In the meantime Microsoft will keep improving IE so it is still a long way to go for Chrome. But I think Chrome is a real threat to the browsers like Opera today and if when the development of 3rd party add-ons starts to catch on for Chrome, it will most definitely cut into Firefox’s market share.