Does the world need another Web browser? Hell no!
I’ll be out of the office on a week’s leave from tomorrow which is probably a good thing because if I see another story on Google’s Chrome Web browser I think I’m going to flip out.
I just succumbed and downloaded Chrome on my work PC. It’s fun to play with and has some nifty features, but I just can’t see why Google would want to splinter the Web browser market even more.
Web browsers all essentially do the same thing and as we’ve seen with Firefox are easily extensible, so there’s no reason why a lot of Chrome’s functionality can’t be added to it.
Funny, my last blog post was about IE battling it out with Firefox and then this happens, who knew.
Chrome does use the Webkit rendering engine, which is great if Google gives back code to the community.
Webkit came from Apple Safari which came from KHTML. Apple was notorious for not playing well with the open source community, so I doubt Google will make the same mistake. Google understands community development more than Apple and isn’t afraid to help out on projects that it doesn’t directly benefit from, which is in the spirit of open source hacking.
What I would have really liked to see is Google extending the existing open source products already out there – like Firefox and Konqueror – rather than dump another free browser out there. Konqueror 4.x is now cross platform too!
Oh well, each to their own, and Google most certainly has its own reasons for doing Chrome.
Perhaps it felt stonewalled by the pace and style of Firefox development?
I hope I’ll find out next week.
TechWorld Jobs (beta)
Recent Jobs
TechWorld Blogs
-

TalkingTech
The view from the top of IT with TechWorld Editor Rodney Gedda
-

Entrenched
Cooking up better code, IDG's developers reveal some of their secrets
-

Broadband Voice
Darren Pauli digs in from the front line of Australia's broadband battleground
Recent blog posts
- Nokia remains 'open' to Android amid Symbian renaissance
- KDE's Seigo gives sneak peek at version 4.3
- Was the iPhone 3G S worth queuing up for?
- Has Oracle started its mammoth technology consolidation?
- iPhone 3.0: the detail is the process, not the features
- TechWorld.com.au goes mobile
- Should Dell buy Palm? Stranger things have happened
- A big week for Linux: is user friendliness finally in sight?
- Apple, Android rain on Palm's Pre parade
- The clone attack is becoming unstoppable










Recent comments
16 hours 33 min ago
17 hours 25 min ago
1 day 8 hours ago
2 days 4 hours ago
2 days 16 hours ago
2 days 23 hours ago
3 days 20 hours ago
3 days 23 hours ago
4 days 1 hour ago
4 days 11 hours ago
4 days 15 hours ago
4 days 16 hours ago
4 days 16 hours ago
4 days 20 hours ago
4 days 20 hours ago
6 days 17 hours ago
1 week 2 days ago
1 week 2 days ago
1 week 3 days ago
1 week 3 days ago