Later today, around 11:00 AM PT (that equates to 2:00 PM ET), Google will be announcing the availability of their Google Chrome beta product.
Is this something brand-new and innovative? No.
Is this something of interest to Web and enterprise developers? Yes… and here’s why:
… But first, a little context for this strange tale…
The Setup
What I was doing…
Yesterday, around 2:00 PM, I was rummaging around a local Best Buy, trying to choose whether to acquire the Call of Duty 3 Xbox 360 game or the Lost Planet: Extreme Condition – Colonies Edition Xbox 360 game.
Now, as many of you know, the recent price reduction in the Xbox 360 console (for the 20 GB Pro version) has encouraged a lot more people into jumping on the bandwagon, and that has led to more people crowding into Xbox LIVE. This translates to a greater impact on the Xbox LIVE service but also greater opportunities for playing a whole cavalcade of gamers worldwide in games that I’ve acquired.
Getting back to the choice between COD3 and LP: I’ve enjoyed the Call of Duty franchise on the Xbox 360 immensely, but primarily from the Infinity Ward development studio in both Call of Duty 2 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I’ve been hesitant to acquire a game made by a different studio (Treyarch) than the initiator. On the other hand, the Lost Planet franchise is new to me, and as a Capcom title, it has somewhat of an unproven lineage, which gives me pause. But while both games sport multiplayer action via XBL, I wonder whether LP offers a distinctively different gameplay quality that may be appealing…
Eventually, I decided to go with filling in the evolutionary gap between my COD2 and COD4: I snagged COD3, and headed home. I’m comfortable with the franchise, and the developer has promised to have kept a lot of the controls identical to, or as close as possible to, the original controls developed by Infinity Ward. And this leads me to…
What Google was doing…
Google [GOOG] had announced around the same time that they’re going to release the beta version of their Google Chrome browser.
Earlier in the day, I saw some hintings that they would be announcing (and presumably launching) their foray into platform launching, masquerading as a Web browser, in the cute form of a Webcomic. Gleaned from the Webcomic are the “evolutionary” changes made to Chrome, as well as optimizations introduced to help support existing and upcoming Google apps…
The Premise
Google has been attempting to push into the hybrid application arena for several years now, with mixed results. Rather than using the heavyweight distributed technologies in this established field, like CORBA and Java, they’ve been focusing on “lighter” technologies that are stitched together via the network: DHTML/AJAX/Java-as-scripting on the client connected to a variety of server-side apps.
Other players in this field have eventually progressed toward delivering either persistent components that fit into existing apps (like browser plugins, OS plugins, starter apps, launching point apps, etc.) or entire replacement apps (like heavy-duty app suites, browsers, app frameworks, code modules with thin UI’s, etc.).
Google has finally taken this second route, after participating quite a bit with the downloadable-runners and the persistent components: it’s Google Chrome, and it is intended to provide an app platform for other Google products to be delivered upon.
The Action
For developers, having yet another app platform to code to may be problematic… but it may also be an opportunity.
As mentioned in the Wikipedia article, Chrome is supposedly composed of both Webkit and Mozilla app framework pieces, so if you’re already familiar with either (or both) of these, the transition toward manipulating Chrome is most likely going to be fairly smooth. Also, to produce apps on top of Chrome, you probably won’t have further to look than Google’s own code labs.
From a technical product release standpoint, the Windows beta version of Chrome is due out first; ongoing work on the OS X and Linux versions is proceeding. Obviously, given the histories of both Webkit (hint: Apple Safari for Windows) and the Mozilla app framework (let’s not forget XPCOM!) and the recent Windows releases, and the available developers, getting a Windows version out the door first, especially for a beta, is a bit easier. But once the UNIX/Linux standardization completes for Chrome, future development should be smoother. But timing is everything, and rushing out a Windows version first helps to target the majority of known consumer Web browser users.
Keeping Track of This…
Since a lot of media outlets, both online and broadcast, are starting to report on this, I’d imagine that Google will start trickling out tidbits leading up to the product announcement that was rescheduled for today (instead of September 3rd).
So, let’s hurry up… and wait. 
N.B.
A lot of you know what “chrome” is, at least from a user’s perspective. But do you really know chrome?
When applied to Firefox and the XUL concept, there is a more specific and significant meaning: it applies to the UI components and effects found in the Firefox browser and, in a related sense, applications built upon the Mozilla application framework.
So, here are some useful chrome URLs for Mozilla and Firefox apps:
- (Standard) Chrome URLs (Mozillazine)
- Developer notes for Firefox chrome URLs (Mozillazine)
More Reading
Here are some Javamancy posts that are related to this one, in reverse chronological order:
Here are some additional related reading materials you may be interested in:
- “A fresh take on the browser” (Official Google Blog)
- Google Chrome (Wikipedia entry)
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