Google Chromium

Been using the brand-spankin' new Google Chromium this week.  Read an article online then one in Wired and decided it couldn't hurt to try it out.  

First impression is how damn CLEAN it is.  Then once you start using it more, it gets smaller.  It's really a new way of surfing, familliar, yet different.  Once you do a little research on how to use it, it becomes very interesting indeed.  

The software is really new, so there are a few features that have yet to be seen, no extensions yet, but if I understand some of the new structures they've put into the software, I think that extensions are going to be a bit different, so a new standard for extensions and perhaps even plugins will be created.  

The most intriguing part of all this is the fact that it's Open Source.  There is a relatively easy to read comic about the software availiable online.  It gets kinda technical at the end and to be sure I understood about 13% of it, but if I got my head around this right, they've created and built some pretty impressive new ideas into the realm of the browser and left it all open and free for all to use.  They simply want to advance the path of browsers in order to advance the internet.  Pretty profound, but then when your business is dependent on the size and use of the internet, the best thing you can do is give people the tools to do it for you for free.

Of course this leaves us in a world potentially saturated with Google.  Seriously, I see it in my life already.  It's totally integrated.  I can query Google from my cell phone, I get my schedule from Google Calendars in my e-mail and as a text message on my phone.  This blog is linked to my Google account, as is my YouTube account.  Even before Chrome, my browser had several Google-based plugins, and Firefox is synonimous with Google.  My homepage is my iGoogle page, I use the search engine for 60% of my searches, I plan trips on Google Maps, have photos on Picassa, and 80% of my office application work is done in Google Documents.  I also use at least a half dozen more Google Apps on a daily basis, it's even connected to several peices of software that I use.

We're on the fringe of the cloud folks, and it's name is Google.