Google Chrome: Bad news for Adobe | Hacker News Reader

Google Chrome: Bad news for Adobe

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38 pointsraganwald37 comments

So, basically, Google is adding more wight to open-source web efforts and that's confounding those that would like to put the web into their proprietary box.

A good amount of the commentary over the past couple days has been about what Chrome means for other open-source projects. It's nice to see an article whose premise (as I saw it) was that Chrome's arrival signals the triumph of the open web rather than competition for current open web products (Safari and Firefox). Sure, some Firefox users may switch to Chrome, but as long as the browsers are open source and have a commitment to standards (HTML, Javascript, CSS), it works out in favor of the open web and all those who are creating the open web (whether they be website programmers/designers or open-source browser makers).

Well put. Although I must admit I worry about what this means for projects such as Firefox, I do think that it will ultimately be good for the web.

Hopefully some equilibrium can be established between the Google and Mozilla camps, but only time will tell if the market can actually support multiple FOSS browsers.

In any case, I am optimistic about what a giant such as Google can bring to the table as competition to the likes of AIR and Silverlight.

Really, the worst case scenario is that the current Firefox codebase is dumped for Chromium which is completely open-source.

Nothing is stopping you from creating the next Mozilla off the Chromium source - in fact, I don't think Google would be anti that at all. They're looking to make sure that browsers can handle web applications. They don't make money off the browser. The better the browser experience, however, the more people are going to use their web applications.

Do I expect Mozilla to dump their codebase? Hell no. Of course, someone at Mozilla might start a nice open source project to port Chromium to XUL (a Firefox powered by Chromium). They've supported lots of different small things in the past - in fact, Firefox was such a project at one time.

As long as it's open source, there isn't a big problem because Google can't exploit anything. If Google starts doing something evil, it would be trivial for someone to fork.

True, if one were to describe I.T. innovation trends in two words they'd say "Creative Destruction" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction) in this case it's not exactly Google creates Adobe is destroyed, in my take, it's more like Google creates, Firefox/IE/Safari/Opera is destroyed. But I have to admit that Open Source projects are very responsive and, consequently, we may see a response from Firefox soon.

What I do admit is that at the end of the day, it's the consumer's experience that counts and, whoever makes the product that works the best for the consumer deserves to win, although victory is not promised. Look at Opera. So, is Google Chrome good for Open Source? If they open source the browser, hell yeah, otherwise, I'll be the skeptic.

Note: Chromium is not Google Chrome, it's PR.

If I were Steve Ballmer, I'd get John Lilly and Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner on my speed dial, right now.

I for one, begrudgingly, welcome our new browser overlords.

Why is Chromium just PR? You can build it yourself and run it.

see: http://dev.chromium.org/developers/how-tos/getting-started

My impression was they packaged it separately to make it easy to have Google-owned icons, etc in the Google Chrome download.

It's not that you can't build it, it's not that it's not Open Source, but it's still PR, here's why.

I'll use the comparison of Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise, or openSuse and Suse. These are truly open source. If you are going to base your proprietary technology on an Open Source project, please build the Open Source version and distribute it if you are building the Proprietary one, otherwise, you don't want people to actually use the Open Source version, it just means you have a good PR consultant and you don't mind "free help".

I bet you $100 they got the idea from a focus group, and Google Chrome has things that Chromium doesn't.

After my experience trying to get flash on ubuntu ppc, i'll take just about anything that hurts Adobe.

As much as I hate to agree with such a malicious statement, I do have to agree that Adobe has not helped their case for community support in their lack-luster support for the Linux and open source communities.

I have used Adobe products for many, many years and have used Flash since it was a Macromedia product and can say that some of the interesting things done with the internet in its earlier days would have likely not been possible without Flash. On the other hand, as a developer and a FOSS user, I am ready for another tool to accomplish what Flash does without all the headaches that we have been forced to endure over the years with flash and proprietary plug-ins in general...

If Google also pushed/developed some open media player and animation technologies and integrated these into Javascript or into browsers, why would we need Silverlight and Air at all?

Actually, all they have to do is make their Lively "plugin" work from all websites and you would have your animation technology. Why the had to keep this one to themselves I don't know, but I'm glad they did because it leaves that opportunity available to some other innovative organization.

most navigation and simple animation can be done in javascript+canvas now, so as soon as there's an open, reliable, bandwidth-efficient, cross-platform video solution that browsers can support, i think flash will go the way of java applets. the iphone will probably help push this along as there's now a large group of people (besides me on my openbsd laptop) that can't navigate websites that require flash.

Some good points, but the reality is that flash is still the most painless RIA platform, due to a mature IDE, the complete lack of cross-browser issues to deal with, and cross-platform market penetration greater than any single browser.

Chrome benefits flash as much as js/ajax, as well. In my tests, flash executes faster in chrome than firefox. And flash can take advantage of the possibility of a larger installed based of gears as well.

It's sort of a win/win for everyone.

I'm less concerned about competition for Flash/Flex and Air than I am competition for the over-priced and bloated CS3.

amen.

due to a project i'm working on, i was recently pretty much forced to become a flash developer. 700 bucks is an awful lot to pay for flash cs3, but i'd be willing to pay it, if it made my job easier. alas, it was the worst piece of software i've ever installed on my mac. eighty billion buttons and toolbars and palettes and menus, which completely takes over the screen, making it impossible to find what i'm looking for.

i found a way to make do with the open-source flex sdk compiler, even though adobe has gone far out of their way to make that difficult. for example, the .swf file format is free and open, but the .fla format -- used to store gui controls and layouts -- is not. so i've decided not to use flash gui controls. me and my cohorts are using javascript controls instead.

The Flash authoring tool is lousy. It's just a decrepit hunk of deformed aluminum. And I say this as an Actionscript programmer of several years now.

Flex, on the other hand, is really damned nice, and the Eclipse-based Flex Builder is not terrible. Good debugger. Using jEdit for coding, Flex Builder for compiling and debugging, and Flash only for the bare minimum of FLA editing, you can have a very decent life.

Therein lays the problem. If Adobe would release an affordable version of Flash, or if any of the open source SWF compilers out there could keep up with the latest Actionscript specs, then more developers would get hooked on it. But I guess Adobe is fat, dumb, and happy with cornering the market on graphics tools that it doesn't need to concern itself too much about growing the Flash developer community. Adobe should think it over because the growing popularity of <canvas> and next generation HTML is going to take large chunks of mindshare away from Flash development.

i think adobe's position is: if they completely opened up the flash format, then they couldn't make any money off of it. they give away the player for free, so they make their money from the developer tools. if they opened up the .fla format, then they'd get killed by competitors, because flash cs3 sucks.

so it wouldn't help them any to grow the flash platform, if they lose their ability to make money off of it.

Which is good news for us all really!...im fine with hurting Adobe.

Chrome is a browser...and flash is a plugin for browsers.

Lets look at it this way: I highly doubt "javascript games" (I think I've seen ONE, and it was from here in fact,) will come and take over flash games. In the same way, javascript can't overtake flash in many aspects.

Flash will inevitably (if Chrome wants to be a widely used browser) be compatible with the Chrome browser. And people will use it and life will go on. Chrome does not in any way affect what happens to flash.

Silverlight on the other hand, is a piece of shit because Mac adoption rate is quickly picking up, because people like ME use LINUX, and because none of us were able to watch the fucking silverlight videos on NBC for the olympics.

That makes me just a tad angry.

Isn't Google chrome just a browser? How can this be a threat to a runtime like AIR? Looks like the author is trying to compare a runtime with browser. Does that make any sense? Please correct me if i am wrong.

It does actually. If you are thinking of offline-enabling your web app, you are more likely to do it with Gears rather than AIR, if Chrome is installed on 90% of the computers

"Chrome is installed in 90% of the computers" is a big if. Still, I like the idea.

You won't actually need to wait for that. I read somewhere that Gears is based on the HTML 5 specs. So once the other browsers go about supporting HTML 5, there's no need for Gears/AIR if you need offline capability.

But IE won't support HTML 5 any time soon.

It doesnt actually.Adobe AIR is not a browser dependent entity like Google Gears. AIR is a runtime. AIR and Gears are not comparable entities.

No.

Take a closer look at integrated Gears with local web server and offline JavaScript hooks + ability to run webapps without browser "chrome" from icons/shortcuts.

Now add advanced rich JavaScript/HTML with ready to use open-source libraries on top of the fastest dynamic language VM in the universe and you probably will see that Chrome is more than "just a browser".

You are right. The article doesn't make any sense.The article author is trying to imply that ,as Google Chrome comes with Gears,Gears could get more popular than AIR one day and thus be a treat to Adobe. I disagree with the author completely.

Unlike Gears,Adobe AIR doesn't require a browser to exists. Adobe AIR can do everything Gears can do and more. Air is not just about building offline/online apps ("occasionaly connected apps") . Air is about building desktop apps. You can build apps that never connects to the internet in AIR.

Google gears is not a runtime. It requires a browser to survive. AIR is a runtime own its own (almost like Java runtime, if you need anything to compare to). Air apps can be built just using html/javascript. Flash is not required. If you want, you can use flash too .

AIR allows traditional web developers to migrate to desktop development without learning C or Java or VB or whatever. In short AIR allows web developers to build complete desktop apps like Winamp,iCal,Paint etc.that doesnt require a browser/internet connection to exist.

In short, comparing Adobe AIR and Google gears (and hence Google chrome's threat to AIR's existence) doesn't make any sense at all.

the competition between AIR and Gears may not be obvious initially because like what you said, Air and Gears are 2 totally different technologies altogether.

But Gears does affect AIR adoption in some ways. Most AIR developers create AIR apps not as standalone desktop apps but as offline versions of a webapp (eg. Twirl for twitter).

So if you are a developer and you want to offline-enable your webapp (eg. Zimbra), you could do it with Gears or AIR. If Gears is already installed on most of your users' computers, you would more likely do it with Gears. (why force your users to download a piece of sofware to run your AIR app?)

I would say Gears is all about extending the capabilities of web apps by adding desktop-like features like local storages while Air is more of a toolset to build cross-platform desktop software easily.

Each has its own strengths and depending on what your solution requires, one of them would be the appropriate technology choice. But since Google has been hammering the point that the web is the platform of the future, i would expect more developers to develop for the web instead of the desktop (which is a major blow to AIR)

to me there's only one problem for Chrome, that I haven't figured out how Google is going to solve: distribution

AIR is being distributed through Adobe Reader and Flash is pretty much ubiquitous (whether you like it or not). Silverlight can sneak in via MS Office.

What MS and Adobe have in common is that normal people outside of the valley already grab 'x' software (whether they know it or not), while the only thing normal people do with Google is go to their search engine...

> to me there's only one problem for Chrome, that I haven't figured out how Google is going to solve: distribution

A link on www.google.com might reach a few people.

yes but will they install it? Installing something is very different from just visiting a web site.

How many people use Google's toolbar vs Flash (or MS Office)?

Well this is the challenge. Chrome needs to be compelling for 'normal people.' As you say that's not easy.

Most 'normal people' haven't tried Firefox on someone else's machine & said 'I want this not that.' In fact, many are still on IE 6. So the bar for 'compelling' is high. You need someone who does not find the difference between IE6 & FF compelling to find Chrome compelling. Big call.

FF got to >15% on that sort of steam without much marketing (but still some). Google can probably out-market Mozilla.

have you heard of youtube?

looking at the stats, i'd say 100% of youtube users is by far better distribution than anything google could get with a link from google.com

That's why it's open-source, BSD license. They're speeding up the arms race for fast JavaScript implementations in other browsers; with the BSD license Microsoft could even conceivably just silently swap V8 for JScript in IE8/9 (hey, it's been done). Offline support is making its way into standards, and the more existing browsers have already implemented a feature, the easier it is to write that feature into the standard.

Since Firefox, WebKit, Opera and W3C seem interested enough in taking down Flash, there's no single distribution channel Adobe can even take on directly.

Chrome will probably not be shipped standard on any of the millions of Linux based MIDs in the next few quarters that AIR will.

i think this whole flash killer stuff is still overblown. 1 word: video. how about another: sound.

adobe has a strangehold on web-media and that's not changing anytime soon.

truthfully as a geek i'm excited about chrome, but as a web developer annoyed that now I need to test with another browser.

The Olympic videos available at nbcolympics.com using Silverlight are beautiful - large, high res and fast.

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