So Google finally got tired of waiting for other browser vendors to improve their offerings - not surprising given how their business absolutely depends on the web. Chrome is definitely very important because it’ll change the way people think of browsers. Back in 2005 I wrote about the browser of tomorrow and listed some key features:

• Offline Access - baked into Chrome thanks to Gears
• Compiled code that can access the browser DOM - present thanks to the “V8″ Javascript VM
• Modern widget set - still waiting on HTML5

2 out of 3 ain’t bad.

A lot of the buzz about Chrome has been about how this is a warning shot about Google’s platform ambitions. Actually, Google’s ambition has been plain to see for some time now: to suck in as much of personal and enterprise computing into the web (preferably its own server farms) as possible.

Its own browser furthers that goal by giving it a greater say in how the web shapes up, but don’t expect a Google OS on your desktop anytime soon. The real gruntwork an OS does (supporting obscure devices, maintaining software and hardware compatibility) is remarkably unsexy and thankless and tends to produce not “ooh shiny” fanboys but “my printer does not work you suck” maniacs who troll your forums (both Microsoft and most Linux distro vendors know this pretty well). Of course, Google will be looking to get its mittens into controlled environments like mobile phones and Internet tablets. But even a browser like Chrome alone will have some profound consequences for the industry:

Mozilla: Now that Google is committed to a svelte, usable, cross-platform browser (dare I say it, the vi of browsers), Mozilla will have no choice but to become the emacs of browsers - an über-customizable does-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink app for dealing with the web. Extensibility will remain Chrome’s weak point simply because XUL (which Firefox uses to create its UI) is so much more expressive. Like emacs’s elisp, XUL is Firefox’s Achilles’ Heel and its single biggest competitive advantage.

Microsoft: It has to get serious about web standards - its rendering engine, Trident, is showing its age (complex CSS-based layouts load significantly faster on Gecko than even IE8 Beta 2). More than that, it’s commitment to Javascript has been iffy as it has bet on Silverlight’s .NET DLR to bring a modern multi-language VM to the browser. With Google showing off what can be done with Javascript alone, this strategy is looking like a classic case of overreach. Sun has the same problem - a JITed Javascript is the beginning of the end of Java on the web client. At this point the best option for both is to work out how their VMs can handle standard ECMAscript in addition to other non-web languages, and how to make these VMs ubiquitous on as many browsers and platforms as possible.