Chrome and the quest for ubiquity

I honestly wanted to write something else, but there was so much excitement generated by two tools this week, across the web, and in me, that I felt that I had to share it. I am still exploring both of these, so it’d be great if you also read the links i share in the post, in case you want to know more.

Lets start with Chrome. That made up 80% of the conversation in Twitter on Tuesday and Wednesday. And made up about 10% of my offline conversations, in which I was spreading the word about it being Google’s new browser, and arguing with convinced individuals that Google did not own Firefox. Which made me wonder, just like the guys at Center Networks, whether all this is important only to some part of a long tail of browser users. I can relate to that. When I redesigned my personal blog a couple of years back, someone told me that it looked weird in Firefox. I asked him what that was!!!! Mozilla became my preferred browser less than a year back. And though I’ve downloaded Opera and Pogo, I’m yet to try them out, while the Flock browser, an excellent tool for social media enthusiasts, is used once in a while. So i guess I can be excused for being shocked  when I read of folk who talk of it being a Windows killer!! The people who should be really afraid are the Firefox guys, this is a good read on that topic.

Meanwhile, all this shouldn’t take away anything from the massive buzz that Google managed to generate, and part of the credit should go to the very unique way of launch – through a comic, which explains the whys and the whats. If we go by this article, Google has been at it for a couple of years now. A couple of good posts to give you a complete picture.

For those who are wondering, Chrome will not give you any more web ecstasy than the stuff that is already out there. But it is fast, with no clutter (even the right click throws up an uncluttered menu), and thus ends up making the screen look bigger. There are some things I miss from my first few days of tinkering. Inspite of the Omnibox, I’d still like a Google search toolbar. I miss my Twitter and del.icio.us plugins. Its eerie though, how my FF crashed right in the middle of the post, and i completed it in Chrome!! It raises some interesting questions on the future of browsing, but for now, Google can pat itself on its back because we hear only good things, though I get scared by such observations. (the last link courtesy @rajivdingra)

The second tool that I got really kicked about was Ubiquity, from Mozilla Labs, an experiment to make common web tasks easier and quicker. You can read about what can be done with this tool here. I tested out mail and twitter with this and it was quite interesting, and easy. But its most definitely work in progress and will take some doing before it can lay claim to ubiquity.

Meanwhile, Microsoft‘s launch of  IE 8 Beta 2 seems to have got lost in all this frenzy. Is that an indication? On another front, GMDesk, an application that lets you run multiple Google apps without opening up several windows/tabs, seems like something interesting. Google, hmmm.. Google likes Wikipedia, but will still have its own Knol, it likes Firefox, but will still have Chrome. And that leaves me me wondering about Google, about not being evil, and the quest for ubiquity, that it unrelentingly chases, but rarely admits.

until next time, keep browsing

Update 09/08/08: Now, this I will love Chrome for. Allowing users to have 2 GMail accounts open at the same time. 🙂