Google Chrome Released: Total Control of Information Dead Ahead

Google has released Chrome, a new web browser to compete with Firefox and Internet Explorer. Google wrote about this yesterday on their blog, and they released an online comic book to describe what it does.

Basically, this is a browser meant to run online applications, Google's future bread and butter. Combined with Gears, the idea is to make your desktop irrelevant and use online applications such as Gmail, gCal, and Google Docs for all your productivity needs, rather than Thunderbird or Outlook, OpenOffice or Microsoft Office, and Firefox or Internet Explorer. Using these applications, it does not matter whether your desktop is Windows Vista, Mac OSX, or Linux; you can use all three and access the same data in the same way from each. Chrome enhances this experience by making them run better, offline, and in their own separate space so that when Facebook crashes your browser, the document you were editing and the e-mail you were reading remain untouched.

We all know about browser inconsistencies. I am sure you have noticed that some sites just look and feel different when accessing from Internet Explorer than Firefox. In fact, many sites will not let you through the front door if you are not running a web browser they have approved. From the comic, Google states they have devised a way to test all the sites on the WWW with their new Chrome browser, and that they will optimize it to work best with sites that are the highest ranked. See comic pages 9 and 10.

Now for the paranoid part: Google is increasingly the portal through which most people access the information on the web. By creating a browser, they control both the means by which you find and access the information you are looking for, and they can decide which sites that will not work with the delivery mechanism. They could effectively shut you off from the information you want to access. Many people worried about this when Hearst had the bulk of news circulation in America, and more recently with ClearChannel controlling much of the radio, television, and billboards across America, but this has the potential of even greater influence.

Do I really think Google will do this? No, I do not, but I write about it because we should always be aware of and careful with our cool new tech. Keep your options open, get your information from multiple sources, and trust in your own knowledge and critical thinking skills. And try out the new browser (if you run Windows, that is), it looks to be a real benefit for those running online applications. Just keep a mind as open as Chrome's source code