Google's Browser Puts the Cloud to Work

A decade ago, a young Marc Andreesen, the founder of Netscape Communications, first spoke about the idea of the browser pushing the operating system into oblivion. Now we have come full circle as Google released its experimental browser Chrome.

In the past years a lot has change. One is that the price of hardware and network infrastructure had decreased. Such a decline has led to what is now called cloud computing, wherein companies like Amazon offer infrastructure on demand.

Meanwhile, broadband connections at home, work and anywhere else have become popular. This has served as a catalyst for those who have developed Web services that have browsers that allow your data to live on the Web but be accessible online.

Optimizing for On-the-Go

Entrepreneurs will all start walking around with new Internet-ready portable devices, pocket sized gadgets will replace laptops. All they need are browsers that can access Web-based software as easily as a desktop can.

An emerging category of Internet-abled devices done for on-the-go computing is getting bigger for Web applications. They are short on resources but they all have browsers. The browser has taken a more important role in our digital life compared with the operating system.

Alistair Croll put it best when he wrote: "Browsers have made computers interchangeable; most of us can work on whatever machine we have at hand, be it a PC, Mac or an XO laptop. As a result, the browser is the new desktop. Today's browser competition is less about who renders HTML properly, and more about what the incumbent browser is and how well it accommodates whatever new applications the Internet throws its way."

Built for Net Apps

But for Web applications to match the desktop applications they seek to replace, the browsers need to offer OS-like functionality. Google’s Chrome browser embodies such an approach as it is specially built for these applications.

"We realized that the Web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for Web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build," Sundar Pichai, vice-president of product management, and Linus Upson, engineering director, wrote on the Google blog.