On Google's Chrome and The Future of Cloud Computing

I’ve received a lot of good feedback for my initial post about Chrome comparing its “Microsoft Killer” hype to the GTalk (now mostly defunct) launch a few years ago.

However, I’ve also heard from several folks who disagree (like Asaf for example).
The main point of the Chrome supporters is that advanced AJAX execution capabilities, coupled with Google Gears offlining capabilities and bundled in a browser provides a platform for next-gen web cloud applications that can seamlessly work online and offline.

The thing is, that no matter how much you optimize your browser’s rendering and JavaScript capabilities, underneath it all our entire web technology still based on old (even ancient in Internet terms) standards set almost a decade ago by W3C – a now defunct organization that is failing to keep up with the rate of technological changes.
Can you really believe that the future is in technology standards set by W3C and updated once, maybe twice a decade?!

It’s W3C’s inability to keep up that is driving companies to develop their own proprietary standards to lead today’s technological trends – Adobe with Flex and Air and Microsoft with Silverlight.

And maybe we’re going towards a browser-less future were we have AIR\Silverlight cloud enabled applications running on our OS?

The point is, taking Apple’s rendering code (apparently, not even the latest build) and putting it inside a featureless window while adding some optimized JavaScript VM is far from being innovative and light years away from the revolutionary expectations that we could hear about before and during the Chrome launch. Adding a few more horses to pull your carriage around doesn’t turn it into a car…

But hey, we’ve had the same story with a boring featureless (sorry, plain and simple) chat program a few years ago 😉