What is the big deal with Google Chrome?

Chrome “leaked”, the early adopters download Chrome to check it out, the world gasped in amassment, apocalyptic blog posts were written regarding the dominance of Google and the threat to Microsoft and suddenly everything went back to normal (see graph 1), turning our attention to our daily lives and waiting for the next big thing).

Graph 1

source: getclicky.com

As you can see in the Graph 2 bellow, 1.7% market share is not a big deal, however is start and not a bad one. But what people tend to forget about Chrome is a beta release and regular users like mom a dads or even [social network] teens will not jump the ship of Google that yet. Remember that Chrome doesn’t offer nothing that will make us change our habit, yeah it looks nice and may load pages faster, still its yet another browser. If you ask me I’m happy with Firefox and I still think Firefox is the better browser out there, just because the ecosystem around it rules, in other works the add-on rock.

Graph 2

source: getclicky.com

There are three things to keep in mind regarding chrome:

• first, chrome will not replace windows because it still needs a operating system to run, so the analogy Google is to Microsoft as Chrome is to Windows will take a while and a lot but lot of effort. Also for this to happened everybody will need the kind Internet you get here in Sweden, Asia, etc.
• second, for Google “Failure is cheap”[1], in comparison to other companies. If they fail with chrome there is no problem, so why not give it a shot
• third and final and to wrap up the previous two: “don’t mistake a clear view with a short distance”.

[1] Paragraph five of The Omnigoogle by Nicholas Carr