Posts Tagged ‘windows killer’

Chrome: A ‘Web OS’?

With all the hype surround Chrome lately, one thing that people have been saying has really made me laugh. People have been calling Chrome a ‘Web OS’ and a Windows-killer.. Yes, the browser from is going to compete directly with Microsoft Windows. Huh? I also heard rumors that Campbell’s is creating a new line of soups to directly take on grocery store chains across the country. (If you believed that I’ve got some software to sell you. Just hit me up in the comments section. I’m sure there’s others who have things to sell you as well.)

Despite the hype, no, Chrome is not in fact going to kill Windows. I wish it could, but no. Chrome runs on top of Windows. Eventually (hopefully soon) Chrome will be running on top of (not competing with) Linux and Mac as well. Is Chrome a great browser? We’ll see when it’s out of beta. New UI? Yeah, definitely a unique flair. Some new features? A ‘task manager’ of sorts seem s a little out of the reach of a browser, but I see why they are doing it. Each tab a new process a good idea? Absolutely. Faster? Maybe. But completely revolutionizing how users interact with web applications? Absolutely not.

Chrome is still at its core a web browser. At the end of the day it’s just like Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, etc., a platform on which to view web pages. I suppose in some sick, twisted way we maybe could get away with calling it a virtual machine on top of your application stack since it does have its own code to interpret and a pseudo memory manager, but no, not an OS. It’s so far up the stack that it’s almost laughable to even come close to hinting at that. Ted Dziuba did a great job in depicting just how down the stack Chrome needs to come before becoming an OS. I would disagree with Ted on the subject of how fast web apps are coming, but a great analogy.

Be sure to tune in next week to learn how FTP is poised to obsolete email and chat as we know it.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (1) : Sep 8th, 2008