Will Google Chrome Change the Internet? September 5
As just about everyone has already heard, Google has released its own open source web browser called Google Chrome. The open source community project is called Chromium. With a powerhouse like Google behind it, will this be a significant challenge to Internet Explorer and will it change how we use the internet? We won’t know for quite a while, but we can gain some insight by looking at Google’s motivation and the technologies they choose to incorporate.
With Mozilla’s Firefox being open source and having a few years of maturity behind it, why didn’t Google simply contribute code to the project? One reason is Firefox’s focus on streamlining basic web browsing while Chrome’s focus is on richer web applications. Google’s view of the web is one of increasingly complicated client-server applications. They see a gradual paradigm shift in the internet, which they are happy to help grow, but which would require a web browser more dedicated to the task.
Another reason for starting from scratch might be one of control. While it is open source, Chrome’s direction is effectively controlled by Google. They are the primary developers and any project forks would get only a fraction of Google’s visibility with the public. The [...]
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