Overlooked Chrome feature points the way forward  |  September 18, 2008  

The downloads have been driven by the new-car smell and the hype that big Google projects always draw, but most of this attention has been paid to Chrome as a browser, when it isn't really a browser at all, or at least not primarily. Because while it sports some serious browser  improvements (notably, the creation of a new process to handle each browser window), Chrome is really a platform for Web applications. This is evident in an often-overlooked feature called Create Application Shortcuts. Enabling this gives you links on your desktop or Quick Launch Bar to Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar. Instructions are here. Clicking the shortcut launches the Web app in a streamlined window that gives you more room to work by eliminating the standard browser controls.

Essentially, this makes Web apps look and act like desktop apps. And because Gears is built in, you can work in Google Docs even when you're not online, and offline support for Calendar is coming. This makes a PC with Chrome into a go-anywhere, work-anywhere office productivity kit. 

In researching this piece, I came across the following from blogger Joe Wilcox of Microsoft Watch: "Let me be absolutely clear: Chrome is not a Web browser, it's an application runtime. Chrome is really Google Gears with a browser facade. Sure, Chrome is based on Webkit and has browser legacy, but the product's core capabilities  - and Google's objectives for them - is running Web applications. Chrome is a development platform, but in the cloud instead of on the PC."

Wilcox is exactly correct. Google's target here is not Firefox or Microsoft's IE, it is Microsoft Office and desktop applications in general. Because who needs big desktop applications when a lean browser will give you same functionality? 

Well, okay, in answer to that question, many people still need big desktop apps and will for a while. Google Apps and those from Zoho and ThinkFree and Adobe (I had not even heard of Buzzword until recently) are not yet as fully featured as they will be soon, but Chrome points the way forward. We're going to cloud computing.

Lastly (and I really love when this happens) we published an article on this trend back in July, before Chrome hit. And we'll be revisiting this topic soon.