Google Chrome Changes the Game: The Browser as Platform

Google announced their new browser named “Chrome” today. Check out the blog post and, better yet, the Google Chrome comic book.

The platform wars just moved from the OS to the browser and Google took a commanding lead.

Rather than re-write everything, allow me the luxury of re-purposing my Tweets:

• Chrome is all open source. They have made the world their R&D department. Brilliant.
• Chrome just increased the importance of Javascript dramatically. They launched a platform where Javascript is the dominant language.
• Google just moved the development platform to the browser. The OS just took a backseat
• If MS was afraid that Google had them in the Search Engine Market, they should be shitting themselves about now about the browser market.
• Chrome will set the bar for what people will expect in a web browser.
• Google didn’t have to reinvent the OS; they just had to build the best browser that could run on any OS.
• Automated testing against google’s vast index of web pages is a stroke of brilliance for stability testing a browser.
• Chrome should solve the biggest annoyance I have with my browser: better memory management so I don’t have to restart my broswer 3X daily.
• Chrome is privacy-oriented. That’s a good thing.
• The name is very toungue-in-cheek: chome is a refernece to the UI for an application, Google wants Chrome to be the UI for the user’s web experience.
• This is the biggest architectural leap in computing in a long time.

Google has just moved to the forefront of the Browser wars and will force the competition to keep up. They have the brand recognition, industry leverage and exposure to get their browser installed in a LOT of computers.

Oh–an it’s also built on the same engine that the Android mobile browser will run on.

Mark my words: Google just changed the game on the web. Chrome is the lever they use to move the world.

My New Distributed Brain

I have become smarter recently. It is due to my new Distributed Brain.

I have recently begun to distribute my thinking across the globe with Twitter. When a question pops into my head, I first check the local cache (my memory), then I query the global memory (Tweet the thought or question on Twitter) to see if an answer or comment bounces back–and often it does. (And if that fails, there is the fall-back of Googling for an answer.)

What’s so special about Twitter for getting answers? It’s the amount of people that can have access to the data. Currently, there are over one million active tweeters–and it’s growing fast. Anybody who tweets can follow you on Twitter (unless of course, you make your tweets private–but the default is public which is nice.)

Of course not everybody does follow me, after all I have never been that popular, however, I do have a fair amount of like-minded individuals that follow me. But the big difference with Twitter is that people can track words. So if I tweet about Drupal, or Ubuntu or Thailand, anybody tracking those words can capture my tweet.

This Is Your Brain on Twitter

Here is an example:

While writing this blog, I was wondering if there were any stats on the number of twitter users. I did not know the answer, but I figured somebody using Twitter would. So I tweeted the question.

I got the Twitter usage stats I wanted for supporting facts in this article. It took a few seconds but it was EXACTLY the info I needed. My distributed brain is quite smart. Smarter than my local brain by itself.

I see this happening all the time on Twitter. People asking about restaurants in Bangalore, how to fix a code problem, where to buy size 13 shoes in Bangkok–queries that Google would choke on.

Why Is This Different?

Internet users have been using forums, search engines, chat programs and other apps for querying and sharing information for a long time. So, why is this different?

It has a potentially wider reach than regular chat/IRC programs.

If you know where to ask the question on IRC or a specialized chatroom, you can probably get the answer just as easily–but finding that place? That might not be so easy. On twitter, everybody who tracks the terms you use in your tweet can see it–a potentially larger audience.

It’s faster than a forum / mailing list.

With forums, like chat rooms, you need to know where to find the people that know the answer and then you have to wait–usually a few hours or even days–to get your answer. With Twitter, the answer often comes back in seconds.

It’s almost always more accurate than a search engine.

When you Google for an answer, an algorithm determines the response. Google does not (yet) have the technology to understand the question–but it has an algorithm that does a very good–but not perfect job–of figuring out what is relevant to your query.

If you use a human-powered search engine like Mahalo, you don’t get an answer to your question–you get a pre-built set of results based on the fact that your question is like another question their human editors have asked and compiled a result for. Again, it’s not THE answer to YOUR question–but AN answer to a question that is like your question.

Any Venture Capitalists Listening?

Here, potentially, lies the seeds for the Holy Grail of search engine technology: a real-time, human powered search engine. If you can build a user base willing to answer real-time questions (possibly leveraging an existing social network), find a way to at least reasonably filter / channel questions to the people with the answers, and a reputation system to prevent spam answer–then you could have a spectacular product.

But why would people answer other people’s questions for free?

Why do they do it now? It’s a great way to connect with other people with similar interests.

And it does not have to be free. Integrate something that leverages PPC ads and there is the potential for revenue sharing–on the order of billions of dollars of revenue per year. Oh yeah!

The new paradigm is the query becomes the social network.

I must ponder this more…. I feel a larger blog coming on.

Until then, follow me on Twitter: @jfxberns.

Buzz? Sounds More Like Fizzle to Me

I just took a peek at Yahoo! Buzz.

Wow. What a steaming pile.

Front page articles as of the moment:

• Britney Spears Gets Some New Jeans
• Pamela Anderson seeks annulment
• American Idol Rundown: The Top 10 Guys
• Angelina and Brad Want to Have Jolie-Pitt No. 7 In France

If I wanted to consume brainless pablum like that I could watch E! or read People magazine. Other articles are run-of-the-mill CNN or MSNBC fare. If that’s what I wanted, I could just as easily be reading those websites.

What’s the value add with Buzz? I don’t see it.

This is the type of crappy site you get when you have a bunch of media executives who use a committee to design a product that “has broad consumer appeal, has reach, has a mass market traction.”

You get a product that has bland, dull and mundane written all over it.

Yahoo Buzz is serving up the same old shallow, mass market crap that hate and the reason I turned to sites like Digg!, Slashdot and Boing! Boing! was to get away from just the crap Yahoo! is dishing out.

I think I am pretty representative of the new breed of web newshounds; I read Digg! because I am looking for off-beat news, humor and opinions with a strong tech flavor. Sure, Digg! can sometimes shoot for the lowest common denominator, but when it comes to humor that’s not always a bad thing. I read blogs on niche topics because thy have in-depth articles on topics I am interested in.

I will not be Buzzing anything… not my cup o’ tea, thank you very much.

Yahoo is looking more like a stuffy old media company that just does get it, struggling get by in a new media world.

Sphere.com: Blog Search that Works

I get some of my best information from blogs. When you have thousands and thousands of brilliant minds blogging their ideas for all to share it’s an amazing thing: great information happens. Unfortunately, a lot of crap happens too.

I have tried to use blog search engines like Technorati and IceRocket, but to be quite honest, the results I got back were not at all useful.

Recently tested the beta of a new blog search engine called Sphere. My opinion of blog search engines has changed.

My Test

I am in the online travel business, I build travel web sites. I am always interested in travel industry news and affiliate marketing tips. Unfortunately, the terms for the searches in this area tend towards a lot of spam blogs. “Book your vacation on Travelocity here!” “Super-Easy Affiliate Marketing Tips to Make You Rich Overnight!”

Luckily, these are also good terms to use to see if a search engine is doing a good job seperating the wheat from the chaff. So I used the terms “Travelocity” and “Affiliate Marketing” and searched each phrase on Sphere.com, Technorati and IceRocket.

Comparing Results: Search Term “Travelocity”

Sphere.com
Out of the top 10 results, 4 were good articles, 2 were inane personal musings, 2 were on a site that appeared to slap up travel-related stories to get traffic and 2 were obviously a travel splog (spam blog). Verdict: 4 worthwhile links.

Technorati
Of the top 10 results, one was a good article, one was just a link to a good article, two were personal musings, 4 were splogs and 2 were in Chinese or Japanese. Verdict: one worthwhile link.

IceRocket
Of the top 10 results, one was just a link to a good article, two were personal musings, 7were splogs. Verdict: nothing worthwhile.

Comparing Results: Search Term “Affiliate Marketing”

Sphere.com
Out of the top 10 results, 4 were good articles, 2 were rather cheesey articles, 2 were RSS splogs and 2 were affiliate marketing get-rich schemes. Verdict: 4 worthwhile links.

Technorati
Of the top 10 results, one was a good article, the rest were get rich schemes and other splog. Verdict: one worthwhile link.

IceRocket
Of the top 10 results there was nothing but splogs and get rich schemes. Verdict: nothing worthwhile.

One Feature That Should Be Ubiquitous

IceRocket has a nice “Exclude” feature that the other sites would do well to emulate. Unfortunately it’s wasted on IceRocket; there is too much junk returned to make it worth the effort to weed out the bad results.

Conclusion

Sphere is the first blog search engine that comes close to having enough relevant results to make a blog search useful. Technorati and IceRocket both do a terrible job of determining relevance and, unless they make some major changes quickly, run the risk of becoming irrelevant themselves.