Chrome just Changed the Game

Whether you’re up on ‘em or think they are sign of the Coming Apocalypse, you may have heard…

Google just changed the game for the delivery of software applications.

They released Chrome: less browser, more application delivery platform.  JITted Javascript — for fast DOM wizardry and Ajax yumminess.  It’s own application space and full-stack OS hooks through Gears.  Your app can effectively leap into the cloud.

Chrome can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.

Microsoft is no doubt worried, poop-their-pants worried.  Suddenly the game is not Silverlight vs. Flash. It’s IE vs. Javascript. At least Chrome might spur a lazy industry into conforming to standards and treating web applications as first-class citizens.  Our web apps will access our systems like desktop applications.

We get Gears baked in (note the lack of “Google” prefix — it’s now simply “of the web”) and if you’ve read the fine-print closely, you already know that this means that Chrome will be a self-updating, self-healing browser. This means that the web will rev at the speed of the frameworks and the specifications, and will no longer be tied to the monopoly player’s broken rendering engine.  ~Chris Messina

And v8 is just drop-dead sexy.  It gives us just in time complied Javascript for fast animation and clean UI presentation.  The future never looked so good.  Especially for Apple, Google, and open source software.  Why Apple?  Chrome uses WebKit — the open source engine running Safari (both OS X and iPhone), Mail, and even… Android.