Chrome’s Critical Role In Google’s Vision of the Future

Do you want to know what Google is thinking about the future, the future of Chrome and the apps you run on it?

They talk about it all the time. It’s just a matter of putting all the pieces together. 

The very smart Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, shares his thoughts in a post to the official Google blog.

A summary of his thoughts on the future:

• In the next decade 70% of human race will have mobile or fixed Internet access at gigabyte speeds. 
   
• Our devices will automatically reach out and connect to other local devices, offering benefits and services which will seem almost like magic (my words not his).  He uses the example of asking your device (think your handy dandy gPhone) where your reading glasses are and having it reply with the last location where the RFID tag was seen. 
   
• Streaming content will become as interactive as static web pages are today. 
   
• Devices in our homes will connect with consumable products (your refrigerator knows the food in it, your washing machine knows the detergent on the shelf) and we’ll be able to measure and control aspects of our lives most important to use (power consumption for example). 
   

Of all of Vint’s observations, one stands out as a beacon of clarity for Google’s vision for the future.

He comments that we’ve learned that “the Internet is essentially a software artifact” and that “if it can be imagined, it can be programmed“. 

Imagine with me for a moment this future he’s outlined. 

Smart devices everywhere. Small compact smart devices. Appliances which have interfaces to display their content, their status, and allow us to interact with them in a smarter more complex way than we can imagine today. 

The software powering everything will have to be a small, tight, well written and fast performing.

This software has to be less about the features of “itself” and more about exposing the features of the machines, and devices using it. 

This software would need to effectively act like a “window into the functionality of the device”, and in the process, make sure that it doesn’t get in the way of your interaction with the device itself. 

If any of this is sounding familiar, here are a few quotes about Chrome from Sundar Pichai, Google’s Vice President of Product Management:

• “We think of the browser as the window to the web”.
   
• “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.”
   
• “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.”