Start to customize a new world

Google is launching a new browser. The news has been the headline at today's Techmeme. Instead of repeating the introduction of the service and the comic book, I want to share a few of my intuition after first hearing the service.

Intuitively, I agree to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch that Chrome is essentially targeting to "compete head on with Windows."

Chrome is more than a browser. Otherwise, its fate might eventually be the same as described by Hank Williams---"it will be a cause for celebration if I care at all even in 2010." But Chrome is more than a browser.

To this point, Nicolas Carr has an insightful discussion that Chrome is trying to fundamentally shifting the focus of Web browsers from page displaying to application deployment. Be note that in tradition application deployment is a key function of operating system instead of Web browser. This is thus Michael's meaning that Chrome is actually targeting Windows in contrast to Internet Explorer in its long run. Moreover, this is where the value of Chrome is.

Quite a few readers in varied major blog sites asked a common question in their comments: why on earth does Google want to launch Chrome? I would say that it is another sign of Web evolution and, again, Google shows its sharp intuition on catching the flow. (This is why Google keeps on its leading position of World Wide Web.)

I have emphasized many times at Thinking Space and I repeat it again: Web 2.0 is an inevitable Web evolutionary event in contrast to a business hype or a commercial buzz. A fundamental upgrade on the Web brought by Web 2.0 is the prevalence of portable Web services (or Web widgets), a typical Web-2.0-quality resources by my study of Web evolution. Due to this upgrade, the Web actually have shifted from copying data among Web sites to deploying services among Web sites. Service deployment rather than data display has been the central issue of the Web at this new stage. It is clearer and clearer that Web browsers may have to be given certain new meaning to compromise the new essential upgrade. The launch of Chrome, again, show that Google stands in front of many others.

Please allow me using my classic Web evolution analogy to conclude this post. After newborns grow to be pre-school kids, can we still limit them inside the cribs? If cribs no longer be suitable platform for the kids to display their talent, we need to create new facilities for them to show their new talent. This is thus why the revolution brought by Chrome is a new sign of Web evolution.

UPDATE: I edit this sentence using the Google Chrome. I must say that the interface is clean and nice. Thought it seems Chrome still has a few bugs to fix since it did not well display this page very well at first and it still cannot display the plugin of reader locations in Thinking Space. But I still love this new browser.

Referenced resources:

• Meet Chrome, Google's Windows Killer (TechCrunch)
• The cloud's Chrome lining (Rough Type)
• Chrome browser comic book (Google)