Is Google Chrome the next New VW Beetle?
So I was sitting at my desk today and noticed on Clicky’s site that Chrome had slipped from the almost 3% high a few days ago to under 2% today. I started thinking of all the already stated reasons that Chrome doesn’t rock at the moment and the security issues (patched) and then remembered another seriously hyped product that ended up being a pretty big dud a little while later.
Remember when VW launched the New Beetle in 1998? The hype was huge, everyone went out and got one, people were putting flowers in that little spot on the dash and people were even counting how many Beetles they would see a day on the street. They even managed to get Motor Trend’s Import of the Year in 1999. Then mysteriously, in 1999 and 2000, they started breaking down. People kept sending them in for repairs.
Well here we are in 2008 and bam, we’ve got a shinny (every pun intended) product in Chrome with probably the best viral campaign since the iphone and people are very quick to run and love it and install it on all their multiple computers (I was guilty of having it installed on 2 computers inside of 15 minutes of its release and even twittering about it).
I don’t know if Google was bitter with Microsoft getting to Facebook first, or peeved that the inked that search deal, but I have to admit that Google leaving out proper Ajax support for Chrome puzzles me. Facebook (Alexa rank 5, Compete.com rank 15), as well all know and have some to love, is heavily dependent on Ajax. It makes everything wonderful, fun and easy. Google believes Facebook is important giving it a Pagerank of 9 out of 10. I ran a search of people within my network of Israel to see how many people have Google listed as an employer and I got over 500… So you would think that one of the developers, at least, tried checking out his profile on Facebook before the release right?
You would also think that Google being partnered with Mozilla would have led to them taking a page out of their incredible development by releasing a developers edition to get the apps and the add-ons on board.. But no. Google knows best!
The big question is will people now come back to Chrome, or will the next Mini come out to put them away as our oh so beloved Mini did to the VW bug?
Titles: Blogging, General, Management, Web 2.0 | One Comment »
11 September, 2008 , 8:40
I don’t know about the ajax, but I certainly can’t function without my extensions, which I’ve become used to in Firefox. So, for now, I am using chrome as my second browser, which I have a simple utilitarian use for: to check an earlier stats page on a real-time view of an adwords account.
On the positive side.. the tabs are great. I love the way the tabs automatically shrink or expand. I didn’t really like having multirow tabs, but I would like to configure my tabs, like the tab mix plus extension allows.