We Love The Web - Blogorhea

Google's new browser could change everything about how you use your computer. This isn't really a post about their browser, however, more about who controls your business-critical data.

Chrome is the first browser that really tries to turn Javascript into a language that you can use for serious application development. Ah, that's technical and I've lost a lot of you right there: but it's important.

Google docs, Google's Microsoft Office 'killer' runs on Javascript.

We use Google spreadsheets here at We love the web, mostly for bug-sheets and progress tracking. We love the fact that we no longer have to email people lots of spreadsheets or get them to use an unfamiliar bug-tracking tool: they can update an online spreadsheet that they already know how to use and we get their updates instantly. These work well until they get to a certain size. They then start crashing our web browsers with annoying regularity. So, if Google docs were more reliable they would be a compelling proposition:

Google docs: Free, requires no maintenance, setup in minutes, instant online collaboration
Microsoft Office: several hundred pounds, complex install that requires regular patching and support, rubbish online collaboration

There are only two ways to do instant online collaboration through a browser: the flash plugin and Javascript. The flash plugin is wholly owned by Adobe and Google wouldn't want to be in hock to Adobe for a key plank in their strategy. That leaves Javascript.

Javascript is pretty awful: slow, unreliable, inconsistently implemented across Internet Explorer and Firefox, prone to falling over and not very secure. I've yet to meet a web developer who loves Javascript. You can do some great things with it, but mostly in spite of the language, not because of it.

This is the problem that Google seems to be trying to address with Chrome. It's the only real innovation in the browser for my money: a bullet-proof implementation of Javascript.

Everything else is pretty standard - Chrome is based on webkit, the same collection of code that Apple used to make Safari and a lot of the interface tweaks owe their inspiration to (have been copied from) an obscure, but well-regarded browser called Opera.

So, if Google docs would only work reliably then Microsoft really could become irrelevant: No longer would you fire up Word, Outlook and Excel when you got into the office: gMail and Google docs. would take over. Chrome is the tool that allows this to happen.

Hooray, you've saved hundreds of pounds per person in not buying Office!

Of course, there is a downside.

All your important business information would be held and maintained by someone else. Microsoft Office just provides the applications in which you work: you store your own data. Google Docs are stored, indexed and ultimately owned by Google.

Within days of Chrome's release, there was a right hoo-haa in the technical press when it was discovered that Google had put a term into the license whereby you granted a permanent and irrevocable license to Google to use, reproduce and distribute anything you uploaded through Chrome: photos, spreadsheet data; everything.

It was quickly removed, with an 'oops' style apology from Google, but that it was even there in the first place is worrying: that they ever thought this was reasonable. I don't trust anyone outside my accounts team with my financial information. Do you?

It's the same old story really: there's always a catch to 'free'. We use Google docs, and will continue to do so for lightweight online collaboration, but never for really important stuff. Think hard before you start entrusting business critical data to a third party. You never know where it could end up.

Note: There are various free office suites that work like Microsoft Office - the most famous is called Open Office, but there seems to be real resistance to it in business, possibly because many business people are nervous about an entirely free application suite that underpins the daily running of their business and isn't supported by a large company.