Update: Google has posted on its official blog saying they screwed up by mailing this cartoon out early. A beta version of Chrome will be made available tomorrow in over 100 countries – but, alas, for Windows only to start, with Mac and Linux on the way.
Update 2: It looks like Google has at least semi-launched its Chrome site here. It provides this screenshot of the browser.
Google Blogoscoped has published a lengthy cartoon sent to them by Google and drawn by Scott McCloud that provides the first public details about Google Chrome, an open source browser based on WebKit and powered by Google Gears that has been rumored but never before confirmed.
According to the cartoon (which can be seen in its entirely here – thanks Marshall), the Google Chrome project has already undergone a substantial period of development with engineers working to create a product that’s secure, user friendly, fast, stable, safe, and easily testable. No word yet, however, on when it will be released.
This is a straight shot over the bow of Microsoft, which has tightly integrated its Live Search offering into its dominant Internet Explorer browser (and which, surprise, is in turn tightly integrated into Windows). It also makes for an awkward relationship with Mozilla, whose Firefox browser Google basically funds.
The cartoon breaks down Google Chrome’s features into the following four topics:
Super Tabs and Scalable Testing
Unlike other modern web browsers, which can only run one process at a time, Google Chrome will give each tab its own process. This speeds up overall performance and saves the entire browser from crashing when one tab causes problems.
The multi-process design requires more memory allocation up front but less memory over time as users tend to multitask. It also prevents your computer from slowing down after you browse for an extended period of time and open/close lots of tabs.
Google Chrome also features a task manager that can be used to determine just which tabs and plugins are hogging just how much memory. It’s main purpose is to spot bad actors and close them before they ruin your browsing experience.
Google is leveraging its massive server infrastructure to run automatic performance tests for Chrome. The company is claiming that its Chrome Bot can test the browser on tens of thousands of different webpages within 20-30 minutes of each build. These webpages are chosen on the basis of their popularity, which has already been determined by Google with the data it collects from its search users. When Google started testing Chrome, it only rendered 23% of those pages correctly (no word on how many it gets right as of today now it apparently renders 99% correctly).
Speed: Webkit and V8
Google decided to implement the Webkit rendering engine (also found in Safari and the forthcoming Android mobile platform) because of its speed and simplicity.
To improve the performance of JavaScript processes, Google also decided to build its own JavaScript virtual machine (called V8) from the ground up. The virtual machine leverages the concepts of hidden class transitions, precise garbage collection, and machine code generation to make JavaScript-heavy applications snappier. It will also be made freely available for other browsers to use if they so please.
Search and the User Experience
Google Chrome will feature a few peculiar design choices as well. Most noticeably, tabs will be displayed at the top of the browser window instead of below the address bar and other buttons.
The address bar (which Google is calling the “omnibox” in contrast to Firefox’s “awesome bar”) is intended to make very helpful and unobtrusive suggestions.
The search box not only displays your favorite search engine but also detects what site-specific search engines you’ve used so you can use them from the Chrome toolbar later. For example, if you’ve searched on Amazon, you can do so again in the toolbar by hitting the letter “a” and the tab key before you type your keywords.
A starting page not unlike Opera’s own Speed Dial page gives quick access to your most frequently visited sites and search engines, as well as your recent bookmarks and page visits.
Google Chrome will also let you open a so-called “Incognito” window that doesn’t record anything you do there (a similar feature to the one introduced by Internet Explorer 8 that has been dubbed “porn mode”).
To keep annoyances to a minimum, pages won’t be allowed to pop up new windows outside of their original tabs.
Windows can also be opened without an address bar and other superfluous buttons, allowing certain web applications to appear as though they don’t depend on a browser.
Security, Sandboxing, and Safe Browsing
Google Chrome is being developed with the assumption that you will encounter malware online. Each tab is contained within its own sandbox that stops malicious behavior.
Google will also continually download a list of phishing sites and list of malware sites to your computer, which will be used to warn you when you visit them. Site owners will be notified when their sites are put on either of the lists so false positives can be remedied.
With Chrome, Google appears to be making incremental yet important improvements that could add up to something very appealing. If the browser catches on, it will provide a distribution mechanism for Google Gears and help the company fend off Silverlight, Microsoft’s own rich internet app platform.
It has yet to be seen what the response from Mozilla will be like. The foundation can’t be happy that Google has snatched up two of its engineers who are now working on Chrome. But some reinforcement in the attack against Microsoft IE and in support of the open browser movement can’t hurt.
At the very least, Chrome sounds perfect for our tablet.
I really dislike the tabs on the top. That won’t work at all for people who maximize their browser windows to full screen, aka, everyone who uses Windows, aka. 90% of the internet.
why not, shoudn’t make any difference at all
Yes google has lauched the fantastic google chrome browser as I find it more about it at http://betterli...chrome-browser/
The product looks great. But is the English grammer correct on the opening comic page? Aren’t vs isn’t and so on…
You’re right, the opening sentence of the comic (”most of what we use…aren’t”) is not grammatically correct. It took me a while to get past that first bubble.
But thats the general way how everyone works and accesses the web using browsers!
Google says that Chrome now renders 99% of pages correctly. I believe that was mentioned in the same speech bubble as the 23% figure.
Ah good catch. On first glance, I thought 99% was just their goal but it does appear they’ve reached it.
I think they meant that 99% of HTML 4 is supported?
This is news we all expected but simply didn’t know when it was coming.
What strikes me is that they didn’t use the Mozilia source code (which is open source) to launch their browser, instead they used Webkit.
Also I am convinced that there is space for a “real” 3rd player to enter the market. Even with google in the browser loop, this industry will still be an oligopoly!
WebKit is simply better. And on top, it’s used on iPhone, it’s used by Adobe Air, OS X.
Webkit is LGPL-licensed while Gecko is tri-licensed including GPL and LGPL.
Webkit is not “simply better” because the LGPL creates a very different agreement between developers and users than the GPL does.
Webkit is different and it’s good. Firefox is still my browser of choice, and the once and future king of web browsers based on its legacy. Firefox is truly the browser of choice for web developers, and thereby, the best browser.
I use Mozilla and am quite happy with it. I have read about IPhone having problems, the latest today was about it having a major security breach. Don’t know if that has anything to do with WebKit.
Firefox is still a memory hog (due to memory leaks, I guess). I leave it on with 10 tabs open overnight and in the morning it’s using 1GB of physical and 1GB of virtual memory in addition to 30-50% of CPU (which in reality is double due to hyper-threading).
WebKit is a lean machine. It is different, yes, but in a nice way. Web developers like Firefox thanks to Firebug and Web Developer Toolbar addons and Firebug’s extensions such as YSlow, Jiffy, Firecookie, etc. Unfortunately, web developers represent a very small portion of Internet users and thanks to Google’s popular brand, Chrome can quickly outgrow Firefox in terms of users.
Webkit is free open source software as well, it is a fork of KDE’s khtml.
Google not choosing Mozilla is jsut like when Apple didn’t choose Mozilla for Safari, they chose KHTML and WebKit was born. I guess web kit is a solid engine fromm everything I hear, and very standards compliant – but holy crap does Safari suck big time as a web browser – can’t stand using it. If someone created an actual good web browser with WebKit, with extensibility like Firefox, it might actually be exciting. This Google browser does not excite me in any way, it’s pretty “meh” all around.
Not surprised at all that the y didn`t used Mozilla code. just have a look at the development time and inherent problems from projects using mozilla code: songbird, sunbird, miro, joost, seamonkey and to a certain degree flock have suffered because of it. they needed a really long time of development to be usable and in the case of all but Flock they are still not 100% usable. the best example of a bumpy and slow development process must be songbird, miro and joost. the have taken years and all 3 just now reached a good enough state for common use. then there is all the other mozilla projects that have failed in the past or that also suffer from a very slow development process.. when you look at that. then you instantly know why they have chosen to go solo with another engine and their own code.
Uh…WebKit is Open Source you moron.
Just a few days ago TC was telling us why google would not be entering the browser space.
Great news as building Chrome on top of WebKit means to web developers that we won’t have to support “yet another” browser.
Now it will be harder for them to penetrate the browser market, but after all, they are Google.
I think the whole thing is a little crazy.
Why does Google constantly have to “prove themselves” against Microsoft?
Can’t they just stick to doing what they are supposed to do? Isn’t their mission to “organize the world’s information and put ads on it”?
If Google’s mission is to organize information, and the browser is an organizing tool for the user, how does building a browser remove Google from its mission?
The point is that the current state of the web is being stunted by the lack of progress in web browser technology; more sophisticated and powerful web applications are not appearing simply because browser performance has not improved enough to enable them.
Google is hoping that by pushing browsers forward, they can increase the space of feasible applications and make more revenue from an improved Web.
That’s one small step for (a) man; one giant leap for mankind into one more browser.
I wish we could just tell browsers how to render a page. For example: you’ve built a page that is perfectly displayed in Firefox, add a and IE9 would render it as Firefox3. Simple solution and a lot of layers to make it happen. until then GoogleBrowser will be the best and the rest will now suck. ;\ Never ending compatibility.
Why are they putting in their own JS engine? SquirrelFish just made its way into WebKit and is *drastically* faster than any other engine out there. You’d figure they’d want to combine engineering resources and work on making one single engine the best.
For one, SquirrelFish is slower than TraceMonkey. But given the sheer CS talent Google employs, the predisposition for building large complex JS apps, and their well known focus on absolute performance, it might be the case that Google has built a Browser and JS VM that smokes the competition.
There is plenty of room left for speeding up JS, speedup up DOM ops, CSS layout, SVG, etc Chrome could be the first “Open Web” browser that could challenge Flash/Silverlight in RIA using standard technologies.
I’m excited but still curious to know what type of relationship this will leave between Google and Mozilla.
Eh, good question. I was wondering that too.
’cause Firefox is actually 75% funded by Google, as TechCrunch said a few days earlier.
Did you read the comic???
Did you SEE THE BROWSER WITH THE TAB NAMED “MemoryHog”???
Jajajaja! The even buy the domain name (memoryhog.net) just a couple of days ago.
This $#!+ is tightwork. Another success by Google…..
http://www.mysp...atedndetermined
Chrome crushes Adblock
Yeah, I wonder if it will come with a plugin architecture that allows for something like AdBlock…
If you’ve hacked Firefox or Mozilla any, you know there’s no way Konqueror, and Safari stack up.
Just the fact that Firebug and the millions of other plugins are missing is going to set it way back behind Firefox. NS_ stands for Netscape.
While I don’t think Google is targeting developers with Chrome, I do expect they’ll have the common sense (if not Google then who) to come up with a tool equivalent to Firebug.
And this isn’t about Google taking on Microsoft. It’s about Gears and Google’s plan for the internets.
I’m copying this enlightening comment from the user “kilowatt” on Hacker News:
*”Basically, WebKit is the most immediately understandable large scale C++ codebase I’ve ever seen. They have a strict culture of code reviews on check-in, and reverting any changesets that cause regressions. My commits have been rejected for style–I was first pissed, and eventually impressed
I can’t speak for Mozilla’s collaborative culture (and the fact that Firefox emerged from Netscape means it can’t be half-bad), but just on an aesthetic level, WebKit C++ is a lot easier on the eyes than Mozilla. One thing that’s interesting about WebKit is that in the last 12 months when I’ve been pulling upstream changesets from them, I’ve noticed that they’re not afraid to do project-wide renames to keep the code clean. It seems like a small thing, but it’s a lot more approachable to see clean C++ that uses namespaces and abstracts away platform differences in a coherent way. Mozilla is full of COM interfaces like
#define NS_IHTML_CSS_STYLE_SHEET_IID \
{0xb5cc4ac0, 0xeab6, 0×11d1, {0×80, 0×31, 0×00, 0×60, 0×08, 0×15, 0×9b, 0×5a}}
class nsIHTMLCSSStyleSheet : public nsIStyleSheet
… and so on. edit: To be fair, I’m just a lot more familiar with WebKit, so maybe someone can defend (or pick apart) Mozilla’s sources better than I can. If you check out WebKit, you’ll also notice that there’s an impressive collection of 210MB(!) of individual layout tests.”
Friend, you know nothing about WebKit.
I’m ready for testing Chrome, bring it on!
I’m more interested in what the relationship between Google and Apple is going to be like. Right now Apple engineers do the lion’s share of the development on Webkit and more or less control the direction of its feature set. How’s Google to figure in this? Will they leave Apple running Webkit, and add all the stuff they want via Gears? Or will they try and gain a more controlling stake in the core development of Webkit? Interesting times!
Search – Advertisement – E-Mail – IM + + + + + Browser + + + + + Operating System… what else? Way to go Google!
!!
google want to control the internet but it will take time
browser is really not so good as media and blog hype made it
http://googlech...a.blogspot.com/
People who think competition is bad don’t really understand people. Pepsi is better because of Coke. Mars is better because of Snickers. The Yankees are better because of the Red Sox.
If done right Google which much make a profit off Firefox can play it against Chrome growing both brands why pushing IE to the side.
Users like competition.
must not much
Who eats Mars bars? And the Sox are much better than the Yankees. But yeah, both teams are better because of each other. But using that analogy, would the Google browser be the Cubs?
LOL depends if the cubs win the world series.
You Think so????
I Think Pepsi AND Coke, both, are the same formula… like since 50 years ago.
How come the copetition made them better??
Man all the discussions ive seen end up in spelling problems and some other off topic bullshit
Mars and Snickers are (were) manufactured by the same people. Mars has been discontinued for years now, replaced with Snickers Almond (which is very close in recipe, except it has added caramel, a cheap and unwanted extra flavor for real Mars fans).
I should add that the additional caramel anecdote above applies to the U.S. recipe of the Mars bar. The post-Snickers Almond recipe was much sweeter because of the (cheap) extra caramel, and contained fewer almonds than the older Mars-branded bar until the additional almonds were restored to Snickers Almond a few years after the rebranding.
Non-American readers can safely ignore these comments.
Wednesday is launch. From comic’s author:
“Actually, the surprise was on me and Google this morning. Apparently a few copies were shipped to Europe before the official launch date of this Wednesday. No harm done though.”
Will Microsoft still have to add google as a search option now that they dominate the market and is launching their own browser?
Official Announcement from Google – http://googlebl...on-browser.html !! Woha!!
Solid post. One issue regarding post update(s) (i.e. “it only rendered 23% of those pages correctly (no word on how many it gets right as of today now it apparently renders 99% correctly).)” Perhaps this is too academic a concern, but I am curious about knowing what motivated the change. What’s the source of the first stat (23%)? and what’s the source of the new stat (99%)? That’s a big jump – not necessarily unrealistic – just interested in the sources.
Best,
-cc
The browser rendered only 23% correctly when they first started testing it (whenever that was). But now it renders 99%.
I bet lots of you are busy buying “chromes” related domain names … Just for reference :>> http://www.ther..._cybersquatter/
This is definetely a good thing BUT I’m waiting to hear about their standards compliance to W3C as well as support for a standard plugin model which will allow plugins like flash/silverlight.. Also Google would be doing this solely to get more viewers to there search pages and hence adverts so it will be interesting just how they go abouts building out functionality around this search/advertising model.
I have a big feeling this browsers going to be a dud!
Google playing catchup again to Apple.
Hi!, could ypu explain me how backtype works?
Sure — BackType gives all your comments a home. Whenever you write a comment on a blog, like TechCrunch, where you fill out the “Website” field in the comment form, we find it and attribute it to you.
For example, you can see my comments here:
http://www.backtype.com/cg
This comment will be on that page shortly because I published my URL (http://cg.urbantwelve.com/) with this comment.
If you have any questions, let us know:
http://www.backtype.com/help
Sure — BackType gives all your comments a home. Whenever you write a comment on a blog, like TechCrunch, where you fill out the “Website” field in the comment form, we find it and attribute it to you.
For example, you can see my comments here:
http://www.backtype.com/cg
This comment will be on that page shortly because I published my URL (http://cg.urbantwelve.com/) with this comment.
If you have any questions, let us know:
http://www.backtype.com/help
In designing websites, I’ve always consider the many, cluttered rows of the chrome as part of the page’s UI. Thus, we’ve moved away from tabs at the top of the page to simple menus on the left (see http://tEarn.com). Google Chrome is cleaning up the mess, replacing the search/URL/address with an omni-box. Great move.
Further, an automated iGoogle/myYahoo makes a lot of sense.
KIS.
Are there built-in developer tools like Safari? Desperately needed.
dumb – with Mozilla fighting many years to get just 15% of the browser market.. does Google really think that people are going to download and install their browser in any significant numbers?
Yes.
I’m swooning over the new thread for a new tab. Crash a tab but not the browser, a welcome change.
The browser bar makes sense too. If you’ve ever looked at google trends after some a national TV promotion you would see that a lot of people dont know the difference between the search bar and the url bar.
Cool or Boring? Google announces it’s own browser, Chrome, with comic book [VOTE] – http://www.thri...rfail.com/74d0f
Google already has me hooked with the whole “one crash tab” feature, instead of the entire browser getting destroyed (like in Firefox 3 or IE8).
I for one am looking forward to this.
~Darnell
It would seem to be a natural progression that if you’re using Google services for 90% of your web usage (Google, Maps, Gmail, Blogger, Sites, Docs, …) then a Google browser would make things run “even smoother.”
This is something that Internet Explorer has had in a way for some time. …and Firefox has 20% without being the default install in any set up (unless some Linux distros opt for Firefox over the native WM browser). 20% of web users made the choice to use Firefox. IE 6’s share is 25%, so I would venture that that 25% did not *choose* IE. In fact, 0.13 percentage points of IE traffic is pre-6.0.
Google will have a much more effective platform through which to push their browser.
Google should come out with their own gBook (laptop) and their own OS while they’re at it. And why not put in some competition against the iPod?
It’s amazing how Google’s trying to cover so many bases in such little time.
But on a serious note, I am waiting to see how this affects the relationship between Google and Mozilla. And am waiting to see exactly whether this Chrome Browser is appealing or not. Will it be good enough to convince Firefox users to use it instead? How about IE and Safari users?
On another note, the whole tabs-on-top idea just doesn’t seem too appealing to me.
Did Zune affect the ipod dominance? Firefox is like the ipod in that people love it. Firefox with its plug ins can solve a number of frustrations felt using IE. Thus users of Firefox begin the love the browser and are incredibly loyal.
I don’t know many kids that ask for a Firefox for their birthday or Christmas.
“Google Chrome will feature a few peculiar design choices as well. Most noticeably, tabs will be displayed at the top of the browser window instead of below the address bar and other buttons.”
Why is this “peculiar”? It’ll look like it acts — why does Firefox make tabs look like I’m switching the URL bar, when I’m switching the page? And it’ll look like a standard tab — why do tabs on the top of the window point down, when every other application I have they point up?
Making tabs look and act like real tabs? They’ve finally got the brains to do it right, unlike the ‘peculiar’ way Firefox and Safari do it.
JG- you puts tabs across the top of the page so that all the user’s navigation options are in the same part of the UI. We’ll see if Google knows how to design a desktop app with great usability characteristics.
@Jahbuh Google is a search option on IE.
Google is a one hit wonder.
…and Microsoft never had an original idea of its own.
For example, if you’ve searched on Amazon, you can do so again in the toolbar by hitting the letter “a” and the tab key before you type your keywords.
I wonder if Google is building a product filled with features designed by engineers for engineers? Does Google know how to design a product that hits the market’s sweet spot of largely non-technical users?
It’s also fascinating to hear Google talk about building a superior multi-threaded application. It really comes down to Google saying they can build a better Windows application than Microsoft can.
If any one company has the greatest credibility and engineering talent to build a web browser, it’s Google, a web company.
Definitely the biggest news in a while. Besides other things, here is now another browser that Web Developers need to ensure compatibility with.
Wanna bet that corporations will ban chrome from being used at work if they can’t control “porn mode”!
They would have to ban Safari and the upcoming IE8 too, then.
I really love how this is killing MS. Yeah, just like the google docs thing has kept office 2007 from capturing a larger share of the office suite than ever before. Oh, wait now, that is what happened. If it takes off it will kill mozilla before it reaches the shores of MS.
>Google playing catchup again to Appl
Yeah I’m sure the market share of Safari is what there are after!
Not their market share. The technical merits of their web browser.
I currently have FF 1.5, FF 2, FF 3, IE 6, IE 7, Opera 9.5, KM 1.1, KM 1.5, and Safari 3 installed across several Windows PCs. I don’t have Seamonkey 1.1 installed, but it should behave similarly to KM 1.5.
Safari is noticeably and quantifiably the fastest renderer by far, with the fastest JS performance as well, and already offers “Incognito” in the form of “Private Browsing.” It is now my primary browser on both old and new hardware, whereas I’ve relegated FF 1.5 and KM 1.1 (on older machines) and FF 3 and KM 1.5 (on newer machines) to secondary browser status for testing and special applications (particularly FF for very specialized occasions that require plug-in functionality). IE and Opera are just for site testing.
now google will know more about your surfing habits.
IE 8 covers and deletes your tracks. Hmmm.
Safari already covers your tracks.
And everything Google does is to reinforce your dependence on their database and network infrastructure. Remember, they’re not selling you anything, they’re selling YOU and the numbers YOU represent and the data that YOU voluntarily offer to their real customers, their advertisers and information clients. The amount of self-serving goodwill Google has generated for itself amongst typical end users is insanely useful to this end, but scary to think about.
snyggast,
this is the one intelligent comment on this thread. Google introduced the toolbar, and now it is serving its own browser, and tracking everything along the way. I guess they will not promote a lot of privacy add-ons, and even if so, I would not bet my house on Goog playing by the rules.
Chrome is a privacy disaster.
赶快出来吧、11我都等上了
a download /and printable) version of the comic
http://www.face...c-as-ebook-pdf/
You guys have to remember, this is just in its beta stages. You can’t expect it to be exactly like or better than FF right at the start. That is an unrealistic expectation. These things take time, this is only the BIGINING. Of course it isn’t going to be as good at the beginning. Just wait a few months or a year and this browser will be awesome!
This sounds like another one of those CULOS, I mean cuulos.
all or lot of comments are about browsers, but I would call the thing Google “WOS” – “Web operating System”. I expect that this will be the start of a new paradigm in computing and will produce a new type of devices. Over the long term it will be the end for the FAT client.
I am happy with using mozilla but, we’ll see if it better than mozilla, then why not using it.
We have yet to see how Google are going to get this onto people’s computers. I’m not sure if they’ll get the same viral marketing success that Mozilla had.
IMHO, This sounds like another Google gears marketing Element, first of all chrome is not a Real O.S Natively running browser, it requires user to have Gears installed, thats already makes this a joke product,I don’t understand what is the motivation behind inventing yet another wheel , besides way to promote not so successful Gears project,is this browser going to address issues that other browser have no addressed yet? – no, is this browser going to show web pages in different mor eflashy colors? – No, ….. common man why do we really need yet another browser, there is already 3 (4 ) major ones that have established to be a stable solid products
Opera
FF
IE
and somewhat Safari as well.
You are Apple;
This means that if it were not enough of a conflict of interest (Iphone VS Google’s Android) to have Google CEO Eric Schmidt sit on your board – It is now. Look for Schmidt to resign sometime in the next six months.
If you are Microsoft;
This means that if you ever considered making Internet Explorer open source in the past, now is the time… You can not afford to wait, not even another minute. Expect Microsoft to make Vaporware like noise over the next few months about cloud widgets to give IE closer ties to cloud based initiatives.
If you are Yahoo;
In a post way back in January we wrote about some of what Yhoo would need to do to be relevant. Now you can add to this list, you need to buy Mozilla.
If you are Firefox;
Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer…yes continue with your Google revenue deal, but learn how to monetize your Browser outside of a paid search deal. Leverage your large user base to form “spin-off” type “power of the crowd” businesses. Note to Firefox, hey you guys ARE a social network…you just haven’t figured that out yet.
If you are Sun;
Realize that Java is even less relevant every day. First we kicked you out of client side computing because you were a resource hog. Realize that Java will now continue to be less and less relevant on the Server. What a waste of a good company… McNealy must have got hit in the head with one to many hockey pucks.
If you are a social network;
In a previous post, we talked about how that in the future your “social networks” would follow along with you in the browser. Truth be told, we thought it would be Facebook, or even more likely Firefox that would lead in this initiative. So if you are a social network, you need to know now Chrome is the first step in a series of moves that will make it unnecessary for your peeeps to ever visit your site (directly) again.
If you are an application developer;
Life used to be simple, eh? You knew that you should be developing applications for Windows, because that is where the 100’s of millions of users were. Fast forward, and now you need to choose what platforms to support, and when. Of course it makes sense to develop for Windows still, but Apple now has a mass of millions of Mac OSx users, and if it a browser based app, write once for Safari, and it should work without much adaptation on the Iphone. There are over a billion cell phones in use world wide, however every phone requires writing to separately (yes even all those different flavors of Java are different phone to phone. Suddenly with Android coming, and a matching desktop browser you need to be here.
Lastly if you are a consumer;
There is always a bottleneck somewhere … Think back 5-10 years ago, before what we now refer to broadband… Dial up was painffulllllyy slow, and when you tried to browse, the bottleneck was in your “last mile” connectivity. Once you got broadband, the lag time in reaching a site was likely in your PC (not enough ram, slow processor, etc). Before either of those issues though it was the software that was not “smart” enough to keep up with the ever faster CPU’s being created.
Look for Chrome to optimize all these new “cloud” based application initiatives like Google Gears, etc. This is just another nail in the coffin for desktop based computing. In 10 years, likely 90%+ of your applications will reside somewhere outside of your home or workplace – but certainly not on your desktop.