

Why a Google Browser? - DanielBMarkham
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/why-google-browser/story.aspx?guid={7EEC2F03-A7B7-42CC-AD1B-3B1B21AD3257}

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StrawberryFrog
An uninformed, pointless article.

Sure, the existence of chrome will increase web developers testing workload,
but the html rendering is just like Safari because of the use of webkit. He
treats it like a new html rendering engine, which is just wrong.

He doesn't even mention the gauntlet that it throws down with Javascript
performance, and the challenge that this brings to Microsoft's silverlight
(for instance). The new javascript engine is where the web dev testing may be
needed.

But his main and lengthiest mistake is with regards the EULA, which he seems
to take as evidence of google being evil. Did he honestly think that google
would try to cliam ownership of blog posts (or books) written via google
chrome? Like that was going to ever fly, with users, courts, or sane Google
executives.

It looks very much as if Google was not "trying to pull a stunt" with the
EULA.

Google made a cut-and-paste error. It was a bug. Google chrome is a beta. B-E-
T-A. It has bugs, and they get spotted. That's what betas are for. if you run
around flapping your arms screaming and shouting that the beta has bugs in it,
then you are doing it wrong.

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mechanical_fish
_Sure, the existence of chrome will increase web developers testing
workload..._

I doubt it. Chrome doesn't have to displace too many IE users before it
becomes a net win. If it accelerates the obsolescence of IE by a single
fortnight, I'll gain fourteen days of happiness.

I have a site that I'm working on that uses a bunch of Javascript. I just made
the mistake of loading it in IE7 first thing in the morning, which has pretty
much ensured that the rest of my day will be stressful and miserable. There's
a page on there that loads in a couple of seconds in Safari, and a couple of
seconds in Firefox (provided you keep Firebug off) but which takes -- I kid
you not -- twenty seconds in IE7, for god knows what reason. You can
practically hear the hamsters spinning around in their rusty little wheels.

Your post inspired me to install Chrome. In Chrome, the JS initializes faster
than I can see. It brings tears to my eyes.

I am still going to spend _orders of magnitude_ more time testing sites in IE
than in Chrome. That's partly because I will literally spend an order of
magnitude more time waiting for my JS to initialize. Then, when I look for
bloat and bugs in IE, I will _always find them_ , and they take _forever_ to
work around, and that work has to be done by a coder.

~~~
StrawberryFrog
A good point, well made.

My opinion is that I don't think that IE will disappear. But chrome may make
IE6 disappear earlier.

The increased competition from Firefox and now Chrome will (already is, to an
extent) force Microsoft to improve rendering standards, and javascript speed.
Which may make your life easier.

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watmough
Terrible article. Dvorak is a page view merchant, though he does occasionally
stumble across something good.

I'm totally of the opinion that Chrome is there to make IE8 look bad, and
hopefully chivvy Microsoft towards a more standards embracing outcome.

We should all remember that Bill Gates strongly drove proprietary standards to
ensure that most generated content was best supported and viewed by MS
applications.

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pxlpshr
Dvorak has always been a pessimistic, glass is half empty commentator on
technology. 99% of the time he's wrong.

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narag
"1.It's a step toward developing a browser that could eventually be
incorporated into a Google operating system"

I'd say that browsers have become operating systems in their own merit, at
least the part of the OS that's relevant: the client-side GUI. The rest is
hardware and config tools. Offering a complete browser as BSD is like offering
a multiplatform GUI toolkit for all programmers out there. If I'm not
mistaken, it's being realeased for Windows only, but the rest of platforms are
expected soon.

Mozilla's Gecko has some rough edges, like C++-centric interface. If Chrome
solves that, it could became a platform in itself very quickly.

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iamdave
That was actually a very good op-ed. I went through and read some more of this
guy's stuff and he takes a very interesting curve ball attack when it comes to
reporting on tech, as opposed to his other journalist colleagues.

And he brought up some very good points on why Google might have made a
browser. Maybe they just did it to be doing it, I don't think anyone has come
out and been so boldly colloquial in their thinking about the matter.

Is it left field? Yes. Is it a bit naive? Just a tad. Is it relevant?
Completely.

This guy underscores everything that needs to happen in tech journalism and he
proved that when suggested that Google Chrome was created just because Google
wanted to make a browser, and plant their claws deeper into the desktop
application scene.

Great job.

