What's next for Google Chrome?

A year after its launch, we look at the future for Google's Chrome browser - and the looming operating system.

By Dave Stevenson, 1 Sep 2009 at 18:40

When it comes to keeping product development under the radar, Google is king.

The company, well-known for broadcasting its work through blogs, caught the computing world by surprise in September last year when it released its Google Chrome browser.

At the time, IT PRO called the browser's performance and stability “an astonishing achievement”, and the browser almost instantly captured a little over one per cent of the browser market, according to Net Applications.

Fast forward a year and there have been no shortage of developments.

Chrome has more than doubled its market share to 2.6 per cent, and it’s risen a spot in the browser charts to number three, overtaking Opera's desktop client. And, despite Apple's apparently-secure position at number three with Safari, the Cupertino developers should be looking over their shoulders. Chrome's product manager, Brian Rakowski, said the company was “hoping for” a release of Chrome for Mac OS X by the end of the first half of this year in a January interview with CNET.

Revolution

Chrome's design was revolutionary. Gone were myriad toolbars and distracting window furniture, replaced by acres of white space designed to give us as much space as possible for displaying web pages.

“That's intentional,” says a Google spokesperson. “The interface is very minimal, leaving more space for the web page, which is the reason you've gone online in the first place.”

The second thing people noticed was Chrome's speed. It launches, we noted at the time, “like a greyhound out of a trap”, and was nearly twice as fast as Firefox in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark, although Firefox has since caught up.

“All those things – speed, security, and streamlined user interface – are part of one bigger thing: helping you stop thinking about (or worrying about) your browser, so that you can get on with using the web,” says Google.

What's next?

So what happens next for Chrome? Even with the much-vaunted “Browser Ballot” due to offer first time users a choice of browser in Windows 7, it's unlikely that Chrome will dislodge second-place Firefox in the foreseeable future, and even less chance that it will be able to take on Internet Explorer.

As Mitchell Baker, chairperson of the Mozilla Foundation, noted on his blog last month, Internet Explorer has a “uniquely privileged position” on Windows systems that neither Firefox nor Chrome are likely to trouble.

The hunt for lasting impact is more likely to lie in Google’s mysterious Chrome operating system.

Google described Chrome OS as a "natural extension” of the browser project when it announced the lightweight OS in July this year. “Our Chrome folks are hard at work on Chrome OS right now,” says the company.