Chrome vs Chromeless
Google’s Chrome browser is a solution that won’t work for a problem that doesn’t exist.
One can argue that the primary success metrics of a browser are performance, stability and user experience and be right. However Google Chrome is only incrementally to negligibly faster, more stable and cognitive load lighter than the competition/substitution. Moreover, if the Google Chrome team had worked with an existing browser development team, say Mozilla, much time, cost and user switching would have been spared and perhaps poured into actual disruptive innovation. (Aaron Boodman’s got a list if you need it.)
But that’s the least of the factors as to why Chrome is a curiously deliberate failure for Google.
Undoubtedly, the next disruptive innovation in browsers, and probably all user-agents of the Open Web, is to be consumed by Web itself.
Let’s imagine an app called Chromeless. Much like Fluid or Prism, Chromeless is nothing more than a rectangle surface to render Web content. However Chromeless’s default URL loads the chrome of Chrome into the rectangle. Chrome’s chrome is loaded in Chromeless from a trusted URL thus has higher security access and runs in a protected mode. Web pages loaded into Chromeless’s Chrome chrome cannot access the protected chrome. Voila — Chromeless now has all the features of Chrome and all the benefits of SaaS.
And no company has more to gain from the Web consuming its browser than the undisputed software-as-a-service (SaaS) heavy weight champion Google.
But wait, there’s more. Chromeless implements a model whereby any Web app is not just a stand-alone Web app, but is the user-agent of any arbitrary Open Web client-server system. Chromeless empowers not just SaaS, but Open Web client-server innovation at Web speed, diversity and agility. Chromeless is a disruptive innovation from the viewpoint of technology (described above), product (e.g., arbitrary user-agents) and business (client-server innovation, like the Web itself, compels standards/openness thus accelerates industry-specific value-chain development).
But alas Chrome is not Chromeless. Why bother having a Ferrari if you drive looking at the rear-view mirror?
One Comment
leave a commentLeave a Comment
Additional comments powered by BackType
One of the reasons that so-called site specific browsers are attractive is that they run in a separate process from your main browser. This means you get to use both the cores in your cpu – one for Firefox and one for your SSB. Chrome's inherently multi-process architecture is designed for the modern computers of the past couple of years and foreseeable future which are increasingly parallel.
Chrome's lack of features is disruptive. It rejects the conventional flawed model of software development that we've seen coming out of Redmond and Cupertino for thirty years – adding features to sell the new version. Chrome isn't trying to sell itself because it isn't the feature – the web is the feature. People want to interact with web pages and chrome is just there to let them do that. In Unix XWindows terms Chrome is just the window manager for your web applications.
Also, by all accounts the Chromium project is actually welcoming to non-employee contributors. That's refreshing. The WebKit side of the fence seems to be doing a better job of that these days than the other guys.
Ian
PS: I used to believe that evolving and extending the web browser user experience was the right way to go. Now I think we just need to burn it down and throw it away. Make every feature, every button, every pixel justify itself, fight for its right to exist.