Ask YC: Isn't the Chrome hype a little too much? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: Isn't the Chrome hype a little too much?

41 pointsjyothi48 comments

Its day 2 and i still see 3/10 posts on HN are someway related to Chrome.

With Chrome Google follows suit with Apple. Awe everyone even before the launch such that for a long time even after the launch people think twice to put a negative comment or point at a limitation. These ones just feel out of the place and are outcast too!

No one comments even though logically thinking iPhone is marginally superior to high end Nokia phones except for the cool UI and a lot less robust and way too pricey.

A cult following. I wonder what happens long term ? Does this break wisdom of crowds because the crowd leaves in the hype and their vision is blurred ?

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I would've agreed with you before the launch, but after actually using the browser, I'm extremely impressed.

It's difficult to deliver on hype (cuil), and few companies can do it well (apple), but I think google got it right with chrome.

Exactly. I was wondering what the big deal was over the weekend (I didn't get a chance to read anything about it until Tue), but now that I've used it, I think it's going to be amazing. Either a) other browsers will speed up and clean up to match it (unlikely due to backwards compatibility with extensions) or about 6-12 months from now it will be my only browser (it is already my primary browser). Same thing happened with Google search, Google Maps, and Gmail. I'm not an uncritical fanboy but I've been here before.

Back in the mid 90s, before IE, Netscape was the "only" browser in the sense that every release was a new de facto standard for HTML. That was actually a good time; the web evolved very fast.

It would be cool if Google did that with Chrome. I prefer de facto standards to the type slowly and tediously produced by committees, unless they're overtly evil (i.e. create lock-in for one company), which this clearly isn't.

I've always wished we could go back to the time when someone just made more and more powerful clients, and everyone else had to follow or be left behind.

Well, right now I think they're trying to stealth-improve by putting Gears into all browsers(but of course it'll still be fastest on Chrome)

De facto standards always create lock-in to a product, at least initially. Nowadays, committees are necessary because no one wants to let their competitor set any standards, "de facto" or not!

How do you do lock in with a FOSS product?

Having sort of "grown up" as a web dev with the way things are now (IE in the lead, followed by a smaller, but significant firefox, a few safari users and this thing no one ever heard of called opera) it's been easy to be cynical about progress in the browser world.

What's so exciting about Chrome is that it validates what had seemed like (to me at least) a lot of wishful thinking about "javascript applications" and really full-featured, browser-based UIs.

Plus, having such a big user of bleeding-edge javascript techniques driving the innovation can't be a bad thing.

I have seen, I believe, 4 different articles concerning Chrome and privacy concerns, as well as an article about a Chrome-related security vulnerability. All of these are, in my opinion, negative -- not hype.

In contrast to the iPhone, I have seen a lot of "it is cool and fast, but I'm not leaving FF/Safari/Opera just yet." When the iPhone launched, it went a little something like, "ZOMG! I will totally be in line for this at 5am even though I hate AT&T and mornings!"

Google Chrome is kind of a big deal. It's not surprising that everyone is talking about it. If everyone is talking about it, it's not surprising that the fact is reflected on the HN main page.

A bit too soon for "wisdom of crowds" to kick in? I'd say give it a few weeks and we'd know.

Agree about the hype. But we're a generation of sub-second attention spans and instant gratification.We're hype-prone. And come on - one of the world's largest technology companies has launched their version of the most used tool in these days - it's bound to generate excitement. I'm guessing it'll simmer down in a few days.

And everything (of any note) will have a cult following as well as a cult anti-following!

Agreed about people being hype prone, look at the comments system on Digg. It doesn't particularly matter if your comment on any submitted story is as insightful as the rest, just as long as your among the first to comment your almost guaranteed to get boosted high and to reap the associated benefits with it.

It doesn't seem to be limited to any particular "group" of people either.

The same thing happens here on HN aswell to a smaller extent & I fully expect to get modded down to all heck because of this comparison.

To me, wisdom of the crowds is abit of a misnomer, as once there is an original "acceptance" by a small group of people, the web 2.0 echo chamber kicks in.

This kind of effect is not just limited to social news sites either, the exact same thing happens with blogs aswell - eg, a story might appear on Techcrunch, and then 1000 "me too" posts will pop up around the place.

It's not only blogs. The traditional media suffers from it as well. If there is significant hype with traction, everyone wants to hitch their wagon to it.

I saw a documentary about Charlie Chaplin. This was happening to him back in his day. This has probably been going on since we've had culture.

This has probably been going on since we've had culture.

You know, I just had a weird connection when you mentioned that - I'm reminded of one of the early scenes to 2001: A Space Odyssey... The "dawn of man" scene. Link posted below for reference.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2XcPNSeUMQ

One ape wakes up and notices the monolith, starts to make a little noise. This in turn wakes up the rest of the apes and they start to make more noise, their tribe is running quite wild.

Eventually one starts to try and interact with the object, soon more follow and learn from it.

If you think about it, this is pretty much the essence of web 2.0

It's even affecting delicious though to a lesser extent. The links there are much higher quality & something that caliber probably would show up anyway.

http://delicious.com/ (half the links were chrome related)

I'd be curious to see if there was a way to measure this effect with any kind of certainty. Must ponder this some.

Chrome is, practically, a brilliant new operating system. It has a new permissions structure, built in malware protection, a compiler, a javascript virtual machine, a task manager, a rendering engine, a new process management system, local storage, and is wicked fast. This is the biggest technical jump in browser tech since mosaic.

You'd hear this much about a new windows or mac os, but it would mean far less. Chrome will open the way for web apps that are as good, as robust, and as beautiful as desktop apps. It's more than just hype.

You're right.

It is also "merely" a brilliant combination of a number of technologies which have been maturing for quite a while. See for instance: "Open Standards Beyond Java: On the Future of Mobile Code for the Internet" by Michalel Franz at UC Irvine. (1998) http://www.jucs.org/jucs_4_5/open_standards_beyond_java/Fran...

There is a lot of discussion for two reasons: (1) the browser is really really good, and as some others have pointed out, it has the potential to really bring in a new era of computing. (2) anything to do with Google / Apple / Facebook is a HUGE link bait, and so news sites / bloggers want to milk it to the maximum.

Edit: also, the iPhone is right to be hyped despite all its flaws. Apple has shown us another way of creating an extremely elegant (albeit sometimes less than usable) user interface with little screen space. In the next few years, you will see everybody copying it and taking it to the next level. The iPhone is good not because what it is right now, but because of all the future potential it has unleashed. Also, a jailbroken iPhone is a hacker's dream despite the closedness of the platform.

Delivering a basically feature-complete browser after near complete radio silence is pretty impressive if you ask me.

I was curious about the same thing and my keyword count script prints this :

chrome : 39 google : 37 startup : 12 web : 11 ask : 11 new : 11 yc : 8 browser : 8 code : 7 chromes : 7 javascript : 7 y : 5 windows : 5 best : 5 game : 5 chromium : 5 v8 : 5 link : 4 combinator : 4 talk : 4 write : 4 language : 4 hn : 4 python : 4 history : 4 technology : 4 programming : 4 twitter : 4 facebook : 4 live : 4 chrome? : 3 project : 3 erlang : 3 market : 3 whats : 3 source : 3 good : 3 friendfeed : 3 things : 3 adds : 3 company : 3 googles : 3 make : 3 job : 3 does : 3 engine : 3 inside : 3 application : 3 business : 3

The magic of chrome is basically it's javascript engine, which is the first major implementation (from scratch) of a js engine since the advent of ajex/client side heavy web applications.

Your analogy with Apple is fitting I think, Apple's iPhone raised the bar on customer expectations for smart phones, hopefully Google' Chrome will raise the bar on Javascript performance in browsers to move the web forward.

They just need to release a damned linux version!

Normally my friend, I would agree with you.

But with 90 tabs open, 25% of them with heavy JS and the system still stable, Chrome itself very responsive, no mis-rendering of sites so far, flawless import of bookmarks and settings, bookmarklets working out of the box, etc.... I think this one is worth the hype.

To think what Safari or Firefox would be like under such a load, not to mention how it would bring the rest of the OS down with it.....

Having an important piece of software that won't crash all the time is a big deal.

Various people tell me that they never experience firefox crashes. Good for them. I do, frequently. And, due to its very design, many bugs in its c++ core are potential crashers.

I was expecting this to be a poll.

There has been a lot of commentary on Chrome. I do think it has been too much. I wouldn't say too much hype though. Quite a lot of the commentary has been on the problems with the EULA and questioning the benchmarks.

I don't get the hype, it's a cool browser, but this new era thing, defining moment, I'm not sold yet...

one thing I'm still looking forward is local integration, it seems far away a smooth integration between web applications and local machine

why the hype? Because it's living up to it. Today while at work, I've been using Chrome. Not because I'm curious about it, but because Firefox 3 is SLOW compared to it. At work I was a lot of JS-heavy websites and apps and I'm just loving it. Reading from Google Reader while having 2 Gmail's open is ... so fast in Chrome

Honestly, I'm still confused how the screenshots on google.com/chrome are KDE screenshots (or at least a Windows skin that looks just like KDE), but there's still no Linux distro.

next: Google netbook?

It's perfect for Google's client-server model. The only reason they wouldn't do it is if they are happy with what others are doing in the space - such as the eee PC. But Google wants it to be cheaper, because that means more users, which grows the internet market for google.

But as soon as google others aren't doing what would benefit google, out will come the google netbook - it's surely in development already, just as Google Chrome was.

It's big, highly relevant news until there is other, more interesting news. It'll calm down in another day, until the Mac/Linux versions come out.

the idea of having separeate processes for tabs is awesome. makes you go duh. javascript performance is simply great. bodes well for web apps. but only two gripes. no adblock plugin yet. and a non standard installer (installs in your documents and settings!)

It's a big improvement. If they gave me Firebug in Chrome, I'd put a bullet in Firefox. :-P

Count your blessings. I think there would have been twice the hype had they released it for Linux and Mac. Most of the hypemakers are on Macs these days, aren't they...

Cool and interesting but yes... overhyped.

Maybe. We're talking about a brand new product in a domain that has, what, four other major players (at least on Windows). That's a big deal, especially given it's coming from Google.

I've not seen Google doing much hyping, just lots of people excited. To an impartial observer, perhaps overexcited, but that's a far cry from over hyped. The whole project has just been rumours for the past x years, and not even very loud ones. Hardly "hype".

what's the problem?

at least Google delivered a very nice product

Ugh, I definitely think that it's very "overhyped". It can be seen even in these comments, and I thought that HN would get me away from this kind of "Wow, something shiny, it's a new age for computing!" hyperbole.

Google Chrome is certainly a very respectable browser, but it's not revolutionary; it does have some iterative advances, like tabs as processes, but it's by no means some coup d'etat of the current powerhouses.

First of all, V8 and TraceMonkey are competitive and both have barely begun to achieve their potential; Fx 3.1 will be at least as fast as Chrome is today, I'm sure.

Google might be able to whisk away a few snobby/brand-obsessed IE users, or IE users who never gave anything else a chance for whatever reason, but the majority of IE's marketshare (people too afraid to install software, and people who freak out when they have to learn something to use their computer) is going to stick with IE. Anything respectable that steals IE marketshare is great, don't get me wrong, I'm just a bit skeptical that Chrome will see more than 5% stable marketshare anytime soon.

Chrome is missing a lot of Firefox's features. It has a couple that were cut from Fx 3, but overall, I think it provides a worse user experience. You get no extensions, there are few real-world sites where you'd notice the speed increase over Fx 3 (and 3.1 will be on par, and if I understand correctly, betas aren't more than a couple of months off) (you would notice the increase over IE; as my computer illiterate IE-using friend stated, "WOOOOO IT'S SOOO FAST"), and very lacking in terms of extensibility and customization, compared to Fx.

Chrome is a great technical asset, and it's exciting to see Google throw their hat in the ring, because it provides a lot to the community and will be for the benefit of all browser developers. It will push innovation forward, and that's definitely a great thing. Mozilla will graft the best parts into Firefox, Google will do the same, and things will continue on happily, finally with healthy competition again. It's undoubtedly an exciting time in browser development, and frankly, this innovation in JavaScript engines and browsers as a whole is long overdue.

Chrome is a nice thing, but it's not "a new age in computing", or any other such ridiculous hyperbolic statement. Have some perspective, people.

As a web developer, I consider Chrome to be the beginning of a new era of online computing. We'll look back at this day and say this was the defining moment. Not that it takes anything away from Firefox at all, but having Google put its stamp on a browser is highly significant.

As a mobile developer I feel the same way about Apple - iPhone (with bugs and all) is the dawn of new era, similar to how PC+modem was the dawn of the connected world as we know it today.

These are the most exciting times in recent memory as three new platforms are being born before our eyes: the mobile PC, the cloud and the "web browser 2.0".

web browser 2.0?

There has easily been more than 2 major revisions in browser technology (I'm not talking just version changes, I'm talking fundamental changes in ideas)

If I had to quickly disassemble it, it would have been something like.

- Pre-mosaic times (the internet was a dark and lonely place) = browser 1.0

- Mosaic, the browser that "popularised" the web = browser 2.0

- The introduction of Netscape and Microsoft IE and the "browser wars" that followed in which microsoft "won" = browser 3.0

- Introduction of a major competitor to IE that championed open source movement (Firefox) would have been 4.0

So if my rough timeline is correct, that would make Chrome browser generation 5.0 and to be honest, while it is a great browser so far - it is just too early to call. Remember Active Desktop for IE4 and how revolutionary that was for it's time? It introduced the idea that the web is more than just your browser, It's not even around anymore that's how revolutionary it is.

One could even argue that Safari for iphone should be 5.0 because it took the true web (not the mobile web, and I dont want to argue about flash) into the palm of your hands.

At the end of the day, the market will decide; so while Google does have a strong brand and lots of successes, it also has it's fair share of "failures". This isn't Google hate, I love their stuff, it's just reality.

(EDIT - put in a few additional things)

Of course active desktop is still around.

It lives on in mac widgets, the vista sidebar, and so on.

Ya, but the point is that it got actively taken out of MS's base browser product (I'm guessing because of their antitrust issues at the time, but I really dont know to be honest).

The core idea however had so much potential, even if the implementation wasn't the best. It was among the first true implementations of taking the web outside the browser, it was certainly the first I'd ever experienced.

Browser 1.0 = designed to render web pages

Browser 2.0 = designed to run web applications

Well then by that definition, Google chrome is still not the first "Browser 2.0" because other development teams have included technologies like Javascript and especially ActiveX controls into their browsers, effectively making them application platforms.

I just would like to reiterate that I'm not a Google hater, nor do I think Google Chrome will fail. I think it's a great addition to the web.

I just don't like all this inane hype that's going around and believe me, tech enthusiasts are about as bad as teenage girls when it comes to gossiping and echo chambers.

Remember when Plurk was the Twitter killer because of Twitter always being down? I think we're still waiting on that one.

EDIT - (fixing 5am grammar errors, I'm sure I missed some)

I used the word "designed" intentionally. The 1.0s were not designed for web apps. They work, but that wasn't their intent. This is the first browser conceived for the purpose of running apps. It just happens to be backwards compatible.

I'm sorry but I can't drink the kool aid on that one, because it sounds like your implying that other software implementations by other developers before Google didn't "design" their software - which would be a complete fallacy.

Don't get me wrong, the multiple processing is fantastic, faster javascript is great, along with all the other toys that Google have in their browser.

However, all this means is Google does it better than anyone else hands down and that it's going to do fantastic things to further the web. It will push other developers to be better, kind of like how iphone pushed other phone manufacturers to be better... but in both cases that is more or less an advantage of being late to market.

Anyway, the point is that I think you might have swallowed the hype a little bit too much in believing that Google is the first generation of browsers that was "designed" for web apps because it was designed to run them better than the many generations before it.

That would be like saying Chuck Yeager was the first man to do powered flight because he broke the sound barrier first.

The Wright brothers would not be amused.

> iPhone (with bugs and all) is the dawn of new era

The iPhone is the dawn of the US waking up to the fact that mobile phones can be cool and used as general computing devices. Much of the rest of the world had known this and been using cool, general purpose mobiles for years.

I, for one, welcome our new brushed metal overlords.

The hype isn't that big. What Google is trying to do might be.

So: no. Reconsider your contrarian status.

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