Walter Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal, who has been testing Google's Chrome browser for a week next to the latest version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, concludes "With the emergence of Chrome, consumers have a new and innovative browser choice, and with IE8, the new browser war is sure to be a worthy contest." Many cloud computing enthusiasts are overjoyed with Chrome and call it the first cloud browser or even the basis for a cloud operating system.
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Member since:
2007-05-21
Member since:2006-06-03
Member since:2005-08-18
Member since:2006-06-03
Gears is more than just 'offline content', check out the website for some real facts. Basically, gears is a set of modules each of which is designed to make web applications, and cloud storage easier to use/manage for the user. I'd say that if it takes off, gears will enable cloud computing to really get off the ground.
Member since:2007-10-26
Cloud based computing just refers to the way an Application can be run on a server(s) out in the Internet with the user interface running on a users web browser. The problem with cloud based computing is that most browsers are designed for browsing not running applications. The Google Chrome browser is designed for running these Applications as well as browsing.
Member since:
2007-08-20
Member since:
2005-07-06
I can't wait till the "cloud computing" buzzword wears off. It's finally overtaken "Web 2.0" it seems.
Why is everyone so enthralled with the concept of cloud computing, anyways? yeah, I REALLY want my crap running on some companies servers that /say/ they won't do anything evil with.
Member since:2005-11-15
Cloudy thinking makes for nice fluffy little diagrams that an IT executive can understand. Sometimes things get so high level they become meaningless. Chrome is just a browser; google mail just stores my mail on some servers, there is no magic involved and drawing a cloud adds nothing useful to a conservation.
You can tell browsers are defective every day when you use them so they certainly need fixing.
Member since:2006-06-03
It's not quite that simple. Take, for example, Google Mail. Yes, the emails are stored on a google server, but with gears, a copy can also be kept on the client machine, allowing offline access, Similarly, the whole Gmail 'application' can be automatically stored locally to allow offline use. This sort of thing makes synchronisation really easy, in a manner that is transparent to the user.
Member since:2007-08-22
So what's the difference between that an IMAP? Or even spoofing Pop3 as IMAP (e.g. not allowing the client to delete messages)?
Really, nothing is gained by it for e-mail.
On the other hand, Google Gears really helps Google with its Productivity Suite (e.g. Docs, Spreadsheet) since they can then be run in off-line mode. But it's not a big help for Gmail...
Member since:
2005-07-12
Wall Street Journal got paid to print that advertisement as if it were an article.
Am I the only one that keeps going "So far we have Safari with a slap of paint, and a open source script engine likely to be upstreamed to every other webkit based browser... So what's all this hype about?"
But then it's a financial rag, much like Forbes I bet they think Web 2.0 is something tangable instead of the marketspeak buzzword.
Member since:
2005-07-07
I think that this whole "cloud computing" buzzword is just to put a misty gray "cloud" around the TRUTH that the government and the corporations want to eliminate the personal computer and go back to the old centralized "time share" rental system that existed in the days when the IBM Mini and Main Frame computers were the ONLY CHOICE in computing.
Member since:2006-06-03
See, the moment you said:
'the TRUTH that the government and the corporations'
you lost the respect of/credibility with most people who read your comment. You sound like a crazed conspiracy theorist, no matter what your message is, and this makes you immediately discountable in most peoples' eyes.
Member since:2005-07-24
'the TRUTH that the government and the corporations'
you lost the respect of
True.
Actually, there is a lot to be said for centralized administration. I'm a big believer in terminals on the desktop. Not sure I'd want the server on a cloud, though.
Member since:2005-08-18
Member since:
2005-07-12
Initially I thought this whole cloud OS stuff was just google showing off their marketing muscles and set the media writing stories about their browser and destroying the launch of IE8.
However, I can see the momentum building up around the web as a platform also, and that the operating system is becoming less important for tasks like email, simple gaming (flash, ajax) etc.
One of bad sides of using the browser as a platform is the developers need to re-implement much of what is existing right now in desktop toolkits. Like keyboard navigation, hardware acceleration, sound handling and more.
Hopefully Chrome will continue to push the envelope on what is possible with a web browser so people can be less reliant on Windows.
Member since:
2006-09-18
When I use Firefox/Gmail I'm somehow not sticking it to the man (a.k.a. Microsoft) because I'm not "cloud computing."
But when I use Chrome (which runs on Microsoft's platform) to access Gmail, I'm suddenly "cloud computing" therefore sticking it to Microsoft or something?
Member since:
2005-07-06
An HTML document/application is nothing more than a scriptable scene graph of HTML elements, and the browser the engine that runs it.
But that's a tad more complicated and meaningful than calling it a Widget or whateverthehell, and the browser an OS for cloud computing.
Regardless, I think Chrome has come closest to the vision of the browser becoming a general purpose UI for applications, and I'd love to see it head further in that direction. And the scripting nut has for the most part been cracked. It's the scene graph and DOM that needs the most work now.