A friend of mine recently posted his thoughts on the "Chrome's overinflated importance". If viewed only as a web browser then it is just another entry in the various browsers that exists out there. However, I believe the true value of Chrome will be if it can change the way people and developers look at web applications.
In many ways, advancement in web development is hindered because developers and businesses have not been able to really think outside of limits imposed by the "WWW" of 10 years ago. Another way to say is that the world wants to move to using the Internet as a platform but we are still stuck on using the WWW as the platform instead.
There has been many attempts to try to break out of that mentality. The unfortunate term "Web 2.0" was one attempt (I think) although it never clearly articulated what it really meant and is now just a overused marketing term. In some ways, "Cloud" seems to be another way to break out from the mindset of "web development" to building applications on the Internet.
Chrome's importance to me is whether it can open up the developer's mind to new possibilities by providing them a tool that goes beyond building web sites and web applications. I hope that someday the "web" will move beyond being viewed as an interactive magazine or at least let the "web" be the interactive magazine while we're also using applications on the Internet.
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