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Google's Chrome Sounds Like 1970s Pressure Cooker

by: Dennis Byron September 03, 2008 | about stocks: GOOG / MSFT    

Dennis Byron

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As anyone that turned on a device in any way connected to the Internet on September 2, 2008 realizes, Google (GOOG) launched its Windows-based Chrome browser into beta test. Sundar Pichai, Google Vice President of Product Management, said:

“We think of the browser as the window to the web – it’s a tool for users to interact with the web sites and applications they care about, and it’s important that we don’t get in the way of that experience."

A comic book reportedly explains this in more detail.

Google is describing an idea that is 10 years old. It includes incremental features over today's technology but these features are reportedly also included in Microsoft (MSFT) Internet Explorer’s latest beta. Users like my wife and my grandchildren—neither of whom ever used a client/server application, even a word processor—know of no other “experience.” So there’s no “oh, wow” thing here to which the vast unwashed base of consumers can react. And since the computer-literate generation in between is increasingly managing its personal (e.g., Fantasy Football) and its employer’s personal productivity (thousands of applications, most inhouse developed) computing from the same platform, the idea of a new portal/browser experience will only be effective if Google also gets Quicken, Turbotax, Project, Autocad, etc.--plus all those inhouse developed apps--ported to its browser.

The description in the press release sounds to me like something we called Portal Mania 10 years ago. It heads users down the road described in this April 2001 article about portals in KMWorld. (The IDC report referenced is no longer available online from IDC for obvious reasons but is probably available from your IDC representative.) The only thing Google might recreate with a big effort on "Chrome as a browser" is the pressure cooker phenomenon. Supposedly in the 1960s—but this may be a marketing-professor urban legend--when everyone was reminded in an ad that pressure cookers blew up by a supplier who had added safety features to prevent its from blowing up, overall pressure cooker sales plummeted.

(I put “Chrome as a browser” in quotes above because there is a popular theory among the technology community that this is really an attempt to replace the Windows operating system on users' personal platform. This is technically possible, using some kind of appliance packaging, but it assumes Microsoft stands still for the 10-15 years it would take to make it happen.)

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This article has 16 comments:

  •  
    Sep 03 09:47 AM
    "but it assumes Microsoft stands still for the 10-15 years it would take to make it happen"

    You mean, like they have been?

    As for Chrome: it has to be notably better than both Safari and Firefox, and that's a VERY high bar.
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 03 10:48 AM
    "A comic book reportedly explains this in more detail."

    You didn't read it? You really should read it before you start dismissing it. There is nothing more annoying than uninformed "pundits" pontificating about things they don't understand.
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 03 11:41 AM
    "it assumes Microsoft stands still for the 10-15 years it would take to make it happen." = Someone finally wrote the obvious flaw in the arguments regarding 'getting' Microsoft
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 03 12:36 PM
    Bob F --
    Honestly I tried to read the Google Chrome comic book but because even my cataract-covered, torn-retina eyes can handle more than 17 words at a time, I gave up. I at least expected a few laughs (hence the term, "comic book").
    -- Dennis
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 03 12:58 PM
    Let me break it down for you very simply.

    On a Web site, there are two ways to generate content that is dynamic and interacts with the user:

    (1) Every time the user does anything, submit a request back t the Web server and send new information back to the Web browser, or

    (2) Run executable program code inside the Web browser itself that interacts with the user, sending updates back to the Web server only when necessary.

    Google realizes that we are at a crossroads. The first crossroads was at the end of the dot-com bubble, when people started coding software designed to run on the Web browser's Javascript interpreter. That gave us rich applications like Gmail and Google Docs and Flickr.

    Now we are at another crossroads. Web developers realize that if they want to code really fast, highly interactive applications (say, video editing), they must rely on a nonstandard technology, such as ActiveX (which is nothing more than executing a Windows program in the browser), Java or a plug-in like Flash. The degree to which each of these technologies can integrate with the Web browser is different -- ActiveX is tightly integrated with IE, but it's platform-locked to Windows. Java and Flash are great programming environments for various tasks, but they are essentially separate programs that run outside the browser, and do not really interact with the Web page at all. Java and Flash are also dependent on the whims of Sun and Adobe, respectively. And all three have serious implications for computer security, since they all allow the program code to run within the user's operating system. Java is pretty well locked down (and uses the same sandboxing model that Google is proposing), but Flash and ActiveX are security nightmares.

    So, Google decided to develop their own solution designed to address the performance concerns of Javascript, the Web interactivity concerns of Flash and Java and the security concerns of ActiveX and Flash (and to a lesser extent, Java).

    Will they pull it off? For many users, the fact that Google applications work better in Chrome may be enough to justify the switch. I spend a significant portion of my life in Gmail, Picasa and iGoogle.
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 03 01:55 PM
    >>>Google is describing an idea that is 10 years old.


    Sex is over 10 years old and still in vogue...

    Seriously, I think you misunderstand Chrome. Chrome as a browser is no big deal but Chrome as an OS replacement for Windows (or any other desktop OS) is. What Google calls the cloud is just client-server architecture. With Chrome on the client side and LAMP on the server side, who needs M$ Windows or IIS?
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 03 02:05 PM
    I should have added, if you need a home grown desktop app, write a home grown web app and run it on your desktop server. As far as I know, most computers today come with a web server already installed (Macs have Apache, I'm not familiar with what comes with Windoze).

    The biggest hurdle up to now has been the lack of fine tuned control over the human interface but with CSS, DOM, JavaScript, AJAX, etc. that issue is being resolved.

    A well behaved browser should be an OS killer.
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 03 02:32 PM
    RickRusselTX and Captainccs -

    Thanks for your comments and I'll take your word for it vis a vis the technical descriptions (skipping over the "disconnected&quo... and "weakly connected" problem your descriptions don't address; for example, Gmail recently).

    But this is an investment site, not slashdot. The idea is what will people buy/how will consumers use Chrome. Hence my comments about applications that would need to be ported to the net. Or how else will Google make money (that nice clean Chrome UI will look pretty messy with ads all over it) to make Google a better investment. Tim Armstrong, Google President, Advertising & Commerce, North America (recently picked up responsibility for Latin America as well), spoke Sept 2 at the Citi Technology Conference, and said basically
    the idea behind Chrome is to get users to use more Google services but there is no particular business model tied to the browser (or anyone’s browser).
    -- Dennis Byron
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 03 04:09 PM
    The business model for Google is "a vibrant, healthy Internet full of well-designed applications". They realize that, in order to sell advertising, they need to attract the maximum number of user eyes away from newspapers, television, etc. and put them in front of a computer screen. Maybe people sit in front of Google applications and services. Maybe not. Google will try to be the advertising broker in any case.

    Also keep in mind that, as the tools to support interactive Web sites get better, Google will actually be able to sell services directly for green cash money. Public and private sector organizations are increasingly converting to hosted Web applications for e-mail, calendaring, CRM, ERP, etc. Google already has fingers in that space and they have made some key sales, and a fast, very stable Web browser can only make those applications more appealing.

    I don't know if they will try to implement unique features in Chrome and use those as a selling point for the platform (Microsoft tried it with IE, and it was pretty roundly criticized). But even if they stick to "industry standards", if they do a better job than the competition -- better performance, fewer browser crashes, etc -- that may be enough to get folks to convert.

    Look at it this way, you could have made *precisely* the same argument against Firefox, which was released in Nov. 2004. Only four short years later, it's at 20% market share (almost all at the expense of IE: www.computerworld.com/... ), a feat that was widely viewed impossible. Children and grandmothers are using it, because their computer-savvy friends are telling them that it's less vulnerable to malicious software.

    Unlike some others, I don't see the Web browser bringing a natural end to standalone applications. Honestly, that's silly. Look at Google Docs, for example, and compare it to any 1990s version of MS Office, or even OpenOffice. The online offerings are short on features by a huge factor, and it will be years or even decades before browser-based offerings compete directly in that space. Ultimately, there will (and should be) healthy competition in at least two major classes of applications: standalone apps coded for each platform, and Web-based apps coded for the browser.
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 03 06:59 PM
    Browser war? If I remember correctly, there was a browser war 10 years ago between Microsoft and Netscape. Back then, browser was top-of-the-line software technology.

    But, it was 10 years ago! It's a commodity technology now.

    Google. Please wake up. Use precious American engineers' brain resource for innovation, not evil politics!

    Google. Stop trying to make software version of microwave, refrigerator, ovens, etc. Microsoft already does a darn good job in that.

    You are wasting American minds with those commodity technology development! Mind is awful thing to waste.
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 03 07:03 PM
    Google!

    If you can't innovate with all your money, then invest it to some startups who are willing to take risks and eager to innovate!

    We don't want another brand of refrigerator!

    Reply
  •  
    Sep 03 07:13 PM
    Dennis, your writing is awash with technical incompetence. IE's new beta has a massive memory footprint and is probably the slowest of all the competing browsers. It also sports supper annoying reminders of its "webslice" feature. If those two things don't equate into an experience, you must be napping between link jumps.

    The least you could have done is to read the comic book. Of course it seems all the same to you, since you don't bother to go into details of what could make this browser unique. Let me give you a quick idea, so you can skip the thirty something page comic.

    Sandboxing: webpages are thrown into the depths of little-to-no-privilege... minimizing the ability to exploit the browser and the OS.

    V8: a brand new of javascript compilation that promises to be faster in runtime than anything else that's been made before, with super aggressive trash collection.

    Process Segregation: every tab is its own process, therefore, a renegade app is very unlikely to crash the browser, and just itself.

    Standards Compliance: 75/100 on Acid3 (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...) is a hell of a lot higher than MS's 22.

    And most importantly: this browser is not about making competition, but about making every other browser better and more compliant. Do you even understand what open source stands for? Microsoft cannot survive because their business model is being taken apart by the internet itself. Embrace, Extend and Extinguish is something everyone knows and is aware of, and only other corporations that are in threat of being snuffed out are partnering with MSFT in any significant way (such as Citrix).
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 03 07:22 PM
    User 255295

    Your posting makes my head spin. Why should I know how microwave oven is made or care what tech standards geeks like or do not like to follow.

    To me, it is just another microwave oven. I am sure that it has its own share of gizmos, but....

    It's a microwave oven with Google brand name on it!

    Ughh, I am as excited as seeing another episode of Gilligan's island.
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 03 07:36 PM
    >>> But this is an investment site, not slashdot. The idea is what will people buy/how will consumers use Chrome. Hence my comments about applications that would need to be ported to the net.


    Browsers are free so I don't see how you can make money on browsers, no wonder Netscape went broke. Even if people develop web apps that run on Chrome, Google doesn't get royalties or fees from them. Revenue has to come from elsewhere, probably advertising. As an investor, the dots one would have to connect are how Chrome feeds the top and bottom lines at Google and I just don't see it.

    On the other hand, if it does catch on, it will weaken Microsoft's monopoly. How does that benefit Google? I don't know. But weakening M$ should help the consumer.

    Disclosure: I have no interest in investing in GOOG.
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 03 07:57 PM
    I am no techno geek, but dgcaste and RickRussell make a lot of good points. Tell me if I have this correct: Microsoft is nearing the apex of its innovation curve...in other words, how much better can Office and IE get? Answer: Not much...because they are already satisfactory. So....Microsoft's massive cash flow is dependent on something that cannot be made much better. Therefore the cash flow will stagnate and dwindle. On the other hand, Google, who also has a massive cash flow, is linked to the evolution of...well.....modern life itself: Google will always be reporting what is "new" in culture, and selling ads to the viewers, like TV did 50 years ago. Microsoft is the Saturday Evening Post, Google is TV and Radio, wrapped into one. The new Chrome browser is an entry into the 10 year old browser wars true.....but....its purpose is not necessarily to break ground....rather it is to incrementally grease the skids to use Google services even more than is currently done with Firefox/IE and others. Do I have this right? If so, it is an ephiphany. I now realize why my Microsoft investment is stagnant for 5 years, while Google has taken over the world......
    Reply
  •  
    Sep 04 01:17 PM
    People ranted, printed, whined and cried out load, how MSFT was killing IBM.

    They wrote books about it, claimed a new world order.

    But 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 years later IBM still makes about as much money as MSFT.

    IBM rev 100b profit 40b
    MSFT rev 60b profit 48b

    How did IBM continue to thrive when every tom dick and harry was 100% sure that MFST had crushed IBM.

    The answer then and now, is simple. Fanboys will project the success of their loved one based on a static competitor. The fanboys tend to assume that the "Bad guy" is some how set in stone and can not protect its market.
    In the real world companies compete and adapt.

    GOOG will not flatten the planet. GOOG is well aware that they have a very fragile cash source. GOOG is fighting 100% to ensure it has some other ways to make money should/if/when search breaks down.

    long goog msft


    Reply
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