Gnoshing on Chrome
When Google surprised folks by
releasing
its Chrome browser this week, it caused quite a stir. A lot of the excitement,
of course, stems from the unique competitive challenge Google poses to Microsoft.
Make no mistake: Mozilla and Apple have done great things with Firefox and
Safari -- literally motivating Redmond to reanimate an IE dev team that had
been frozen in carbonite since IE 6 shipped. But those organizations aren't
a serious threat to unseat Windows as a dominant platform.
Google, on the other hand, is.
Andrew Brust is chief of new technology at twentysix New York and an RDN contributor.
He's been keeping a close eye on Chrome, and the way he sees it, the launch
is a tale of two browsers. On the one hand, he said, Chrome is simply a new
UI layered on top of the same WebKit engine used to power Safari.
"The various novel features are not hugely innovative or difficult to
implement. Even the premise of running each tab in an isolated process is not
unique to Chrome; Microsoft is doing the same thing in IE 8," Brust wrote
in an e-mail interview.
The real innovation, he said, is the V8 JavaScript engine, which applies just-in-time
compilation to enable script code to run as true binary executables on the client.
And that's where it gets interesting.
"Since Google's bet in wresting industrial control from Microsoft is on
the browser becoming a true application platform, these kinds of changes to
the way client-side code executes are pretty crucial," Brust explained.
"Really, this means that V8 in Chrome competes with the CLR in Silverlight."
Billy Hoffman, manager of the Web security group at HP, agreed. He said Google
enjoyed the benefit of hindsight as it shaped Chrome to emerge as an application
platform.
"Browsers were written very quickly in the mid-1990s to display content.
They weren't intended to be platforms for running applications. The fact that
they can do it is a kludge," Hoffman said. "What I think is exciting
about Chrome is they put some stuff in place that allows you to design next-gen
applications."
And there, said Brust, is the rub.
"If Google wants real momentum for V8, then they need real tools for V8,"
Brust wrote. "Most corporate developers like and need rich IDEs to get
their work done. Microsoft is, currently, second-to-none in this department,
and they recognize how much that helps Windows as a platform."
The failure to win the hearts and minds of developers has killed a lot of Microsoft
competitors over the years. Netscape, Apple, IBM...the list is as long as it
is distinguished. Can Google succeed in wooing developers where so many others
have failed?
You tell me. What does Google need to do to make Chrome a compelling and attractive
target for your Web development efforts? E-mail me at [email protected].
Posted by Michael Desmond on 09/04/2008