How Google plans to rule the computing world through Chrome

Good luck. There was a company in Redmond trying to do the same with IE.

Or rather, how Google plans to rule the consumer computing world.

It's been a while since the average Facebook addict really needed a computer anyway, they can all throw their laptops away and switch full-time to phones and tablets and I won't care.

But businesses and professionals have different needs. I don't see web apps and NaCl apps replacing Office suites, IDEs, or 3D graphic design tools anytime in the next decade, no matter how much Google tries to advertise Google Drive (Docs) as an Office replacement. There's a lot more to "computing" than shiny new consumer-grade gadgets. Although I vaguely remember a Chrome add-on that can SSH into remote machines, why would I use it when I have GNU utilities running natively on my OS?

> What does your desktop look like a year from now?

Probably the same as it does now. Lots of terminals and text editors, maybe a browser window or two in the background.

Difference: IE was ugly and IE experience was ugly.

A bit overly dramatic. Long term, I think there will be a harmonization between Chrome packaged apps and Firefox OS apps, and maybe even Surface RT. I personally prefer 'drive by' apps and I think install should really mean "bookmark and pin my cache".

The real issue is keeping the Web viable, as it is under attack from native platforms, and both Google and Firefox have to keep aggressively upgrading the platform to keep to competitive with what's available.

We've seen an astounding amount of innovation in the browser in the last few years. As Larry Page said at I/O when asked, eventually developers should not have to think about the platform.

Not so sure. The Internet and the browser make many scenarios very easy (Joel Spolsky makes a great case). Jeff Attwood, with ego firmly in hand, named a law after himself that says any software that can be written, will be written for the browser.

While entirely possible, that's an extreme view, and maybe not very realistic.

The web's "viability" as you put it, will naturally shrink into its natural niche. First and foremost it's probably good to remember that the web relies on a transport layer. There are apps (web sites, email and so on) that live on top of that. That transport layer is what makes the web compelling, but that's not the only possibility (or future) that that layer affords us.

I think the real viability question is not the web, but rather data ownership. Users' personal information created Facebook, user knowledge created Stack Exchange, and user behaviour generates Google's income (amongst many examples on the web).

Users that are the raison d'être for these web sites have no power over, or control of their data. And it's that fact that will shift (and on mobile, already is shifting) focus back to native client apps that are completely decoupled from the browser. These apps use the Internet as a transport layer, in much the same way a browser does.

The shift then, as I see it, is towards one in which the balance of power over data is maintained in a natural equilibrium.

In that world, the Stack Exchanges will do well online because their acquisition of user knowledge benefits users directly. The Facebooks and Googles will (I imagine) remain relevant, but not in the way they'd like to be.

In conclusion, what the article posits will probably come to be, to a degree and for a while.

But it ain't the future.