What happened to “don’t be evil”? 

Why do you insist that people “posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services”?

What made you think that the world needed another browser?

When you decided you wanted a browser, was the design brief “Opera, but use WebKit, and a new JavaScript implementation”?  That’s really all you produced.

JavaScript needs fixing, you’re right about that.  But if for a second you think the “correct” way to fix JavaScript is to ignore significant inroads made by other corporations and organisations in a massive “not invented here” haemorrhage then you’re very, very mistaken.

But most of all, what made you think that people won’t see this as the transparent attempt to force the hand of web standards that it is?  Seriously, let me get this straight;  When Microsoft do ActiveX and invent things like the XML RPC object, that’s evil and against standards and trying to lock everyone to Windows.  But when you create a browser and re-implement JavaScript in an attempt to force the other browsers to follow your lead in an further attempt to give Google Apps a stranglehold on the majority of “online applications” that’s just fine?

JavaScript really really needs fixing, and yes, a lot of people use GMail, but to try and suppose that the entire web is so dominated by Google Apps that a browser need be created to drive market share towards them is pure egotism, especially for a company with at most (and I’m being generous) four successful projects under it’s belt (Search, the killer app.  AdWords, the money.  Google Maps for a slick implementation and debatable GMail due to market share).  It’s lunacy to think that you’re fixing anything, rather just adding an extra layer of development and complexity on to the already arduous battle for web compatibility.

Your browser isn’t bad, it’s quite clean, it’s likely another eternal beta, but in the end, it’s just a stripped back version of Opera.  I’m sure you’ll do a good job of it, but in the end, will yet another minority browser really be worth it?  You need another hit, I really appreciate that, but try remember not to be evil on the way.

I just wish you’d put all this effort into existing technology.  One of Mozilla’s millions of prototypes (you are the sugardaddy after all) or even Opera (seeing as you like it so much) would be ideal, lets not repeat history again and again.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 5:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.