Google’s Chrome – the “iPod” of browsers

Sometimes when you back and look at something you’ve read before, you see new things due to the passage of time.

I re-read the Google press release about Chrome.

In it, Sundar Pichai, Google’s Vice President of Product Management said “We think of the browser as the window to the web”.

That in itself is cool to see and think about, both simple and philosophical.

Next he says “it’s a tool for users to interact with the web sites and applications they care about, and it’s important that we don’t get in the way of that experience” and I see the passion he and the rest of the team have about creating a great product for customers.

In other words, “we’re going to make you a great tool that’s very important to the things you do, but at the same time, we’re doing everything we can to be an invisible part of that process”.

In the last part of the paragraph that I like, he says “Just like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome has a simple user interface with a sophisticated core to enable the modern web.”

Does the concept of a “use it every day” product made of sophisticated technology and wrapped with a simple interface remind you of anything?

If not, turn up your iPod, relax and see if anything comes to mind.

See the full press release from Google is here at Business Wire.

See the cool new iPod nano’s from Apple here.

Google Chrome: a pearl or irritating grain of sand?

Is Google Chrome a pearl or irritating grain of sand?

For some, Chrome seems to be the answer to their dreams. For other, another irritating grain of sand gumming up the works.

Google expressed their desire to do their part in stimulating a healthy eco-system in the browser arena so they created Chrome. 

Judging by the press surrounding Chrome and the quick succession of announcements by Firefox about 3.1, it looks like they’re on the right track…acting like a “grain of sand” to stimulate the market into creating

 pearls. 

Indeed, with the release of Chrome, Google has raised the bar in the browser market by making “tabs run as separate processes” a check list item in every browser review. The software teams working on the other browsers probably see this as a grain of sand rather than a pearl. 

For the end users, I think the jury is still out. If Chrome matures and becomes the “iPod” of browsers or “operating environments”, it will definitely be a pearl. If it turns out to be another “Google Answers”, like so many other irritating grains of sand, it will get washed away with time.