Chrome is good news for the ABM crowd

Sam Varghese
Friday, 05 September 2008 06:20

Opinion and Analysis

The release of Google's Chrome browser is a welcome development for those who belong to the ABM category - the Anyone But Microsoft group.
They don't mind a monopoly, they just don't like the Microsoft monopoly.

The prospect of having Google dictate the course of their digital lives is apparently pleasing to these folk, who see the company as some kind of cuddly teddy bear - a big bear, sure, one that embraces you, fine - but, hey, it's a warm, soft embrace so who cares?

Such thinking is dangerous in the extreme. I'll come back to this later on.

It's evidence of the lack of innovation in software engineering these days that Chrome has been greeted in some quarters as something akin to the second coming.

For instance, that idea about having each separate tab run in its own sandbox as it were - how come none of the great programming minds, whom we see commenting on a myriad things every day, thought of that?

Microsoft's concept of browser design is exactly the opposite - any time the browser gets stuck, the whole system goes down with it. Reboot, restart and then continue browsing. (If you like, you can also reformat).