On Sep 3, 2008, at 4:25 PM, Kontra wrote:
If Chrome is a competitor to AIR then LOTS can be done with it.
Not just a competitor, it's an AIR-killer, to use the tired
expression:
It can only be an AIR killer if you believe it's possible to maintain
a baseline "web browser" while also being able to innovate in the "web
applications" space without breaking said "web browser."
Needless to say, I don't subscribe to such a belief. I feel at some
point, in order to get such innovations, you have to get past the
rudimentary limitations that made the web browser so popular in the
first place. The Back button? Page refresh? No concept of "selection"
or direct manipulation interaction that made the Lisa and the original
Mac interface back in the early 80s so radical in the first place?
Chrome is being promoted as a web browser. AIR is explicitly trying to
be an application environment and explicitly *not* a web browser. AIR
is moving in the direction of building lightweight desktop
applications with web functionality that do the things all good
applications can do but not with the heavy development cost of
traditional application development. And as Jared pointed out, AIR is
adding a lot more to make it an even richer application environment
that is explicitly not a browser with web app content inside of it. In
other words, the fabled RIA environment. We'll call this RIA+ though,
as AIR is also trying to build just enough into it to open it up to
new application innovations if possible. Microsoft is also now aiming
at that for the future as near as I can tell. Both companies are going
after that space aggressively and it will not look like anything that
the "browser wars" are going through.
Is it possible to have market viability for both environments? Sure, I
think you can easily make a case there's a need for browser based web
applications and RIA+ applications. But can one application
environment handle both and innovate in both simultaneously? Not that
I've ever seen.
Until Google explicitly backs away from treating and marketing Chrome
like a browser, they will be limited because the consumer audience
(i.e., end users, not developers) will treat it like a browser and
therefore measure it like a browser and want browser features. Once
that game starts, good luck trying to be all things to all people.
Browser users already have things they like to use and other browser
developers will try to chip away at differentiations, like
performance, forcing Google to spend time keeping up with browser
feature bloat wars than aiming squarely at the "next thing" on the
horizon, which AIR will do with no baggage attached to it because like
I said, AIR is not a browser. Conversely, AIR has the challenge of
market penetration and giving people a reason to install the
environment in the first place.
If Chrome is indeed intended to be a web application platform for the
future, then Google will need to resist ever adding more "browser"
features to it that will hold it back, like say RSS feeds inline. The
more they do add browser features, the more it becomes a normal web
browser, and the more it gets held back from being the AIR killer
because it has to compete with Firefox and IE8 and Safari than keeping
up with stuff Adobe is doing with AIR and Microsoft is doing to
Silverlight, which will be decidedly different than the normal
browsing experience. See: Pownce and the soon to be released Raptr
clients.
In my opinion, Google is trying to have their cake and eat it too. I
wish them luck with that. I have yet to see anyone win doing so, not
Microsoft, not Apple, no one. Maybe they will do it. Who knows. I
personally think Google will find themselves in some serious pickles
trying to do so and they will have to pick a side in order to move
forward: be a browser or be an application development platform.
A good test for Google if they indeed want to be a web application
environment and not a browser: Outright remove the Back and Forward
buttons from the product. I'd love to see them try that!
--
Andrei Herasimchuk
Principal, Involution Studios
innovating the digital world
e. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
c. +1 408 306 6422
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