Thoughts on Chrome

I've been using Google's Chrome as my primary browser since its release, and I've been meaning to record my thoughts on it. So, here we go.

 

I think Chrome could be Google's most important development next to the search engine itself.

 

I don't say this because it's a particularly great browser -- it's not bad; it's not the best; it doesn't matter.

 

Nor do I say it because it makes a good browser-based application platform. It does; it doesn't matter.

 

The important thing is that if Chrome gains even a five percent share of the desktop across a wide range of users (i.e., not just geeks) then Google will be able to vastly improve, even revolutionize, Internet search (again).

 

The reason for this is pretty simple: people are better than PageRank. That is to say, people are vastly better at judging the relevance of a page to a query. With only a search engine, the best Google can do in that regard is record which hits get clicks for a given search, and extrapolate from that how the user judges the hits. With a browser, Google can do much more. They can record a user's complete Internet browsing experience, and from that judge the quality of pages. Is this page bookmarked? Is it visited often? Does it get printed? How much time does the user spend interacting with the site? Is it left open in a tab, or closed? Is it the first tab? The active tab? And so on.

 

Now, I'm not saying Google is doing this, nor do I know that they have any plans to. I'm sure EPIC and the other alarmists would be running through the streets screaming if that were the case. But the potential is there.

 

The next step would be to know something about the users themselves. Imagine correlating demographic and psychographic information with searching and browsing behaviour. Google would be able to match a given user with those who match his or her profile and tailor search results accordingly -- and that would just be the beginning. Imagine the value of the ads.

 

Now, why would I let Google know all about me and record my browsing behaviour? Two reasons. One, they're a nice company (by which I mean, of course, that they are thus perceived by the public) and they would never ever use the information for nefarious purposes. Two, quid pro quo: if I share my information, I get better search results.

 

Long ago, Vannevar Bush (my personal intellectual hero) imagined people blazing trails through the world's knowledge. Here we, perhaps, go.

 

(BTW, you're probably wondering why I said Chrome needed a five percent share: it's my SWAG as to what it'd take to collect a big enough number of participants to make the whole thing work.)

Safari, my saviour

I've been meaning to take a couple of minutes to sing the praises of Safari, by which I mean not a browser but O'Reilly's online library. Like most IT professionals, I've got a bunch of dead-tree O'Reilly books laying about, but having complete, searchable access to everything O'Reilly publishes, plus plentiful content from most other major IT publishers, is an absolute life-saver. Not only is it much cheaper and easier than buying old-fashioned books, it's infinitely more portable -- I no longer find myself packing a few extra kilograms of books into my carry-on. When I do need hardcopies or a way to work offline, I can generate PDFs -- I receive five "download tokens" per month, each of which is typically good for one chapter in PDF. Additional tokens can be purchased, and O'Reilly recently added "whole book downloads" which are great for those titles you just can't do without. And you can always buy the print version if you choose, of course, often at a nice discount.

 

New titles and even new publishers appear frequently. I subscribe to the RSS feed for such things and I often receive two or three items per day. 

 

Online viewing is very comfortable. A "print fidelity" view provides a PDF-like appearance, while a straight HTML view is lighter. Be warned that not all titles are available in both views, though. Zooming and pagination are good, and a retractable left-hand pane gives section-by-section navigation.

 

Content is not limited to books. There are e-learning videos, whitepapers, and how-to's (O'Reilly "Guides") too. A huge bonus is "rough cuts": late drafts of books not yet published. For those who live on the bleeding edge, rough cuts are invaluable. O'Reilly even lets readers provide pre-publication feedback.

 

There is room for improvement, of course. I have an unlimited subscription, so I can put as many titles on my "bookshelf" (my favourites list) as I want. The only downside to that is that my bookshelf quickly became hard to manage. A better bookshelf interface with more sort and custom metadata support would be welcome. Also, the web interface itself needs a bit of an overhaul -- too many clicks and page loads are required for simple tasks that could be handled with a bit of AJAX.

 

All in all, though, Safari represents an outstanding value and I'd recommend it to anyone who works with IT.

Up and down like a...

If you're here for any reason other than a bad Google hit, you may be just a little perturbed at the site's dismal availability statistics. Two reasons, neither of which are my fault: first, my Internet connection has a nasty habit of failing and I have yet to trace the fault (I suspect one of my cable modems -- yes, I have more than one -- but I'd have to get my ISP here to verify that, which brings me to...); second, I've been travelling on business an awful lot and I'm not on hand to notice the problem and don't really have time to properly address it. Anyway, sorry for any inconvenience...I'll try to get things fixed over Christmas when I've got a couple weeks at home.