Chrome: Just a new browser?

Howdy! I’m back to some frequent updates again!

Initially, as my first post to inaugurate the return, I planned to translate a post I wrote in Portuguese about the launch of Chrome, Google’s browser. Since in English there are some much more rich information about the topic available, I decided to rather just point them out instead.

In the post I wrote in Portuguese, I start by talking about how in the current short-term scenario the release of Chrome wouldn’t matter that much. It would be much like the loss Netscape suffered in the mid-1990s against Microsoft due to the absence of network externalities and to low switching costs between browsers. You can read Shapiro and Varian's “Information Rules” book for detailed information on this or go straight to the page where the spoiler is in there. You can also check for yourself that Google’s browser so far has reached only 1% usage.

The point then is that this release has a vision attached to it. It’s not a simple release of another browser. Instead, it’s one more step towards a paradigm shift. We are probably witnessing the transition from a world dominated by PCs requiring an operating system to function to one where PCs or even operating systems won’t be required anymore. It is in that new world Google is betting.

So, for more details, I recommend:

• Nicholas Carr’s post on the topic;
• The Economist’s overview of Chrome’s launch; and
• The 5 reasons why Chrome could take over the world.

A bug in Google's system

I got this e-mail today from Google:

Hello,

There was a bug in our system that allowed you to sign up for a nickname that was already taken. Please log in at and update your profile with a new nickname. We are very sorry for any inconvenience this may cause, and hope that you'll take this chance to come up with a new creative nickname!

Thanks for your understanding and best of luck in the contest.

- Google Code Jam Team

This is after more than a month using the old nickname and doing some of the exercises with it. My nickname is ideed very common, Rick, but it's not the same as the one with Google's profile, even though the e-mail address is the same.

So the only thing I can think of is that they were not checking for unique nicknames before and were relying their system solely on some internal code. Now that the contest start date is approaching, they figured unique nicknames will be important.