Interesting pieces of news today leaking out of Google on a new product coming out called Chrome.
The way I read it, Google is developing a new browser and going to open source it. This is interesting to me because - hey, browsers could be better - and there are definitely some things that are being proposed that are neat, like the most used page (sort of like a Task Manager) that will pop up on startup (so, the things you do most often are probably likely suspaects that you may want to do again. Makes sense. See pic
Also, from reading their online description (actually designed as a comic book), it seems like there will be better security, more resiliency and just a better, more useful overall experience. A lot of these things courtesy of better memory management and other Operating System priciples already known.
And this is where I think the communications got blurred on what this product is. To hear others talk about it it is either a whole new web based operating system that will bring Microsoft to its knees or a sneaky way for Google to push a whole lot of crappy applications or other pieces of malware onto your system.
I think, in the long run, that this could be a very handy tool. If properly executed, Google may win some people over to the web, but for the forseeable future this will just be another browser that will succeed on how well it fits with users goals. It is not going to be the next OS for the web, it will not make your toast and pour your OJ in the morning.
To me, it will be well worth a download and trial. But, I am keeping my toaster for now. (according to reports, it looks like something may be on Googles site after 2PM EST that can be downloaded http://www.google.com/chrome)
Cheers,
Jay