The Neuromancers of Google and their Burning Chrome

A lame title, for cyberpunks everywhere. I don't normally write about this kind of stuff, but as there seems to be seismic rumblings of positively Cyclopean scale in the intertubes, I thought I should make an exception. I refer, of course, to the net-wobbling news that Google have opened a new line of attack on the old World order and launched Chrome, their first web browser.

If you are a techie and into comics (and let's be honest- "techie" goes with "comics" like "Laurel" goes with "Hardy") then you can read the background documentation in cartoon-form here; some thirtymumble pages of it. But why am I telling you this? If you've got this far, you know this already!

Now in truth, the average web user is probably not going to get much to get excited about from Chrome. As one chum pointed out: what new and exciting stuff can you do to a browser? Oh, it has some clever gubbins under the bonnet - and much of this clever gubbins may well go to make for a faster, more stable and more secure web experience. But at the moment it's kind of hard to tell. I will certainly give it a reasonable run... but my first impressions are: "So it's a browser. And...?"

Of course, I am a technical Philistine, who fails to appreciate the subtlety of the Javascript implementation, and who finds the interface a little too bereft of familiar friends. However, I suspect in the coming months I will come to love and cherish this newcomer - in marked contrast to Lively, Google's foray into virtual environments, which leaves me completely cold.