Great post by Till Grusche of Frog Design, FailForward: Why Successful Innovators Have to Learn How to Fail explains us how to better think the innovation process.
While I full agree on teaching failure better and adopting the “design-as-a-process” from the early start, the "Google Wave" example highlights that a "corporate failure" may be a sign of good business management, but may have a dramatic impact on employees.
My opinion on Google Wave is that is was only "half a failure". Great idea, great concept, but beta-level prototype that suffered from bad ergonomy and bad visual design. They hadn't enough time to improve on it.
Many people believed in it (see the reactions after the termination announcement).
For me, it was killed *too early*, viewed as a failure according to "Google standards".
The problem is that it had a terrible impact on true inside innovators: Lars Rasmussen (Maps, Wave) left to go to Facebook, as did many. And this led recently to a general 10% salary increase at Google to stop the bleeding.
The price to pay for killing "cool" projects, I guess.
How good is this, in the end, in term of business and employee inspiration?
Clearly the Google Wave case demonstrated to many employees that Google wasn't the good place where they could innovate on high-risk projects anymore.
Finding the right moment to fail is a very delicate tradeoff...
Seems like the "Forward" in "FailForward" failed for them {;-))
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Update on iOS legal conditions
Thanks to inquiries started by the FTC and the European Commission, Apple have relaxed developer restrictions.
What's funny is that I'm sure this will benefit a lot to their business.
As I mentionned a few months ago, this has indeed turned into a fantastic opportunity for Android.
More Android phones are now sold in the US than iPhones (for many other reasons too).
What's funny is that I'm sure this will benefit a lot to their business.
As I mentionned a few months ago, this has indeed turned into a fantastic opportunity for Android.
More Android phones are now sold in the US than iPhones (for many other reasons too).
Monday, April 26, 2010
With iPhone OS 4.0, Apple has officially turned into an evil tyranny
If Apple was a carmaker, an Apple car would look like this :
But with iPhone OS 4.0, things are getting worse:
I love my iPhone, and I sincerely think that my MacBook is great hardware.
But freedom is more important than business or convenience.
To sum up the story of Apple's last SDK (software development kit), Apple has published new legal conditions along their iPhone OS 4.0, especially the paragraph 3.3.1, which, in plain english, has the following consequences:
Change your mind Apple, don't try to format ours.
- its wheels, windshield, wipers would only be Apple's authorized ones -- ok, for security reasons, we understand this
- all the luggage or strollers you put in the trunk could only be Apple's approved models, sold through their shops
But with iPhone OS 4.0, things are getting worse:
- providers of wheels, wipers or strollers have to throw away their factory machines and buy Apple ones.
I love my iPhone, and I sincerely think that my MacBook is great hardware.
But freedom is more important than business or convenience.
To sum up the story of Apple's last SDK (software development kit), Apple has published new legal conditions along their iPhone OS 4.0, especially the paragraph 3.3.1, which, in plain english, has the following consequences:
- Apple forbids any editor to issue an intermediary tool that can be used for iPhone app development, especially the libraries that ease cross-platform development (you write your code once, it works on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc.)
- Adobe was supposed to release its Studio CS5 on April 10, that accomplishes exactly this - write once in Flash, deploy everywhere. This is undoubtedly an evil anti-competitive move from Apple.
- Other editors are harmed, for instance Unity Technologies that could die because of that.
Even on the worst days of Microsoft anti-competitive practices, they never went that far. They never forbid an application to run on their platform, as Apple has done with Adobe Flash or Google Voice.
Remember how angrily people were shouting at Microsoft at that time, for far less than what Apple is doing now.
Remember how angrily people were shouting at Microsoft at that time, for far less than what Apple is doing now.
I'm an iPhone fan and I often tout the merits of the device to my friends. I will not anymore. I cannot promote a dictatorship.
I am shocked, Apple went beyond any acceptable limit. This is a question of freedom. And I want a free world for my kids, not the walls Apple is building around us.
What will be next ?
People that Apple does not like will be banished?
People that criticize Steve Jobs will be deleted from Apple's world?
People that have not the good political views will be chased down?
With a monopoly, this would be illegal. I consider iPhones as an almost-monopoly on high-end smartphones.
Fortunately, developers are rebels in nature. They hate orders and love freedom.
Apple development environment is old-fashioned and complex - proprietary language (Objective-C), incompatible with what most developer use, and on Mac only.
I think this will turn into a fantastic opportunity for Android, since they are very developer-friendly, run in Java, on Eclipse IDE.
Apple products may be magical, they are nothing but a magical jail.
Let's break the chains.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Update on video & video-conferencing
Google just announced that Adobe Flash will be built in Chrome 5, Google's homemade browser, natively.
At first glance, it could appear as a victory and the confirmation of Flash ubiquitous future.
However I think this is the high price paid by Adobe after being set aside by Apple in iPhones & iPads.
They have lost part of their autonomy, to survive Apple's slaughter. They had little choice.
Many websites have started restructuring their services without Flash. Thanks to Apple's stance, Google has been able to impose its conditions: integrate Flash plug-in deep into Chrome, which means taking control over it.
But this is also a high price paid by Apple for competing with Google on smartphones and future tablets.
The crisis burst into flammes when Apple rejected Google Voice application for iPhone.
Google was more on Apple's side at first, promoting HTML5, CSS, SVG & Javascript as a built-in replacement of Adobe Flash.
My analysis is that Google firmly believes that web standards built into the browser are the right solution (without Flash - I agree).
However they have with Flash a fantastic opportunity to boost their competitive advantages over iPhones & iPads.
In the meantime, this puts Apple in a difficult situation...
I look forward to seeing Apple's counter-attack, what a great suspens!!
At first glance, it could appear as a victory and the confirmation of Flash ubiquitous future.
However I think this is the high price paid by Adobe after being set aside by Apple in iPhones & iPads.
They have lost part of their autonomy, to survive Apple's slaughter. They had little choice.
Many websites have started restructuring their services without Flash. Thanks to Apple's stance, Google has been able to impose its conditions: integrate Flash plug-in deep into Chrome, which means taking control over it.
But this is also a high price paid by Apple for competing with Google on smartphones and future tablets.
The crisis burst into flammes when Apple rejected Google Voice application for iPhone.
Google was more on Apple's side at first, promoting HTML5, CSS, SVG & Javascript as a built-in replacement of Adobe Flash.
My analysis is that Google firmly believes that web standards built into the browser are the right solution (without Flash - I agree).
However they have with Flash a fantastic opportunity to boost their competitive advantages over iPhones & iPads.
In the meantime, this puts Apple in a difficult situation...
I look forward to seeing Apple's counter-attack, what a great suspens!!
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Video & video-conferencing on the web & smartphones: the nightmare of incompatibilities
Flash brought us YouTube, DailyMotion and generalized streamed video, on 99% of PC browsers (through plug-in).
The latest version even handles webcams and desktop sharing, wonderful!
Meanwhile, Apple brought us the wonderful iPhone and a generalized mess about video.
Their iPods & iPads don't even have cameras.
Back to bad old days?
In the "video case", Apple underlines that a right solution for video on smartphones must be built-in and highly-efficient.
Perfectly right.
Let's take a look at the "video landscape" today:
* Adobe Flash:
On every PC browsers, as plug-in.
Video through FLV files (MPEG4 equivalent), can be served by any web server.
Captures webcams easily. Allows video-conferencing through browser
(e.g. adobe connect, dimdim.com, ...)
Available as PC applications with Adobe AIR rich-client platform.
Not available on iPhone, prototype on Android.
* HTML5:
Built-in on HTML5 browsers (Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera,... all but Microsoft IE - may become available in IE9). Progress has been slow for years because of Microsoft IE supremacy (innovation in this field was contradictory to their interests).
Problem with video format: Apple favors MPEG4, which suffers from licencing restrictions.
Firefox & DailyMotion favors Ogg which is free, but still marginal.
No consensus on encoding format in W3C. Adoption is therefore limited.
Available on iPhone & Android
On webcam side, ability to capture has just been added to the HTML5 spec and will take months and propably years to widespread.
For PC applications, you need to embed a browser.
* Java (Sun, now Oracle):
Dramatically late on these matters. JavaFX lags years behind.
No proper way to provide webcam capture in Java application (JMF is just pre-historical)
The only hope would be to embed HTML5 browser within Java applications (or be able to communicate between browser and applets). But even on these paths, they're moving very slowly as far as now.
Not available on iPhone and very limited on smartphones, generally speaking.
* Misc:
-- Silverlight : all the cons of Flash without the pros (limited availability)
-- Skype : good for person-to-person conferencing, but hard to embed in any application.
As you see, the current divergence makes things very complex on video broadcasting.
Try to watch on your iPhone a video posted on Facebook: impossible.
Try to watch on Firefox an html5-mpeg4-video: impossible.
Try to watch on Safari an html5-ogg-video: impossible.
The right path seems clear: built-in video capability in browsers with licencing-free encoding format + ability to capture webcam straightforwardly.
Unfortunately, we are years away from this.
Except if Adobe manages to impose Flash to everyone, which is very unlikely and is not ideal for smartphones.
The current situation dramatically limits innovation.
So frustrating!!
The latest version even handles webcams and desktop sharing, wonderful!
Meanwhile, Apple brought us the wonderful iPhone and a generalized mess about video.
Their iPods & iPads don't even have cameras.
Back to bad old days?
In the "video case", Apple underlines that a right solution for video on smartphones must be built-in and highly-efficient.
Perfectly right.
Let's take a look at the "video landscape" today:
* Adobe Flash:
On every PC browsers, as plug-in.
Video through FLV files (MPEG4 equivalent), can be served by any web server.
Captures webcams easily. Allows video-conferencing through browser
(e.g. adobe connect, dimdim.com, ...)
Available as PC applications with Adobe AIR rich-client platform.
Not available on iPhone, prototype on Android.
* HTML5:
Built-in on HTML5 browsers (Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera,... all but Microsoft IE - may become available in IE9). Progress has been slow for years because of Microsoft IE supremacy (innovation in this field was contradictory to their interests).
Problem with video format: Apple favors MPEG4, which suffers from licencing restrictions.
Firefox & DailyMotion favors Ogg which is free, but still marginal.
No consensus on encoding format in W3C. Adoption is therefore limited.
Available on iPhone & Android
On webcam side, ability to capture has just been added to the HTML5 spec and will take months and propably years to widespread.
For PC applications, you need to embed a browser.
* Java (Sun, now Oracle):
Dramatically late on these matters. JavaFX lags years behind.
No proper way to provide webcam capture in Java application (JMF is just pre-historical)
The only hope would be to embed HTML5 browser within Java applications (or be able to communicate between browser and applets). But even on these paths, they're moving very slowly as far as now.
Not available on iPhone and very limited on smartphones, generally speaking.
Special notice: Oracle could however decide someday to enter the arena seriously, which would be an amazing complement to Java on the client side.
They could buy the Mozilla Foundation (Firefox & Thunderbird, whose revenues depend too heavily on Google), for instance...
* Misc:
-- Silverlight : all the cons of Flash without the pros (limited availability)
-- Skype : good for person-to-person conferencing, but hard to embed in any application.
As you see, the current divergence makes things very complex on video broadcasting.
Try to watch on your iPhone a video posted on Facebook: impossible.
Try to watch on Firefox an html5-mpeg4-video: impossible.
Try to watch on Safari an html5-ogg-video: impossible.
The right path seems clear: built-in video capability in browsers with licencing-free encoding format + ability to capture webcam straightforwardly.
Unfortunately, we are years away from this.
Except if Adobe manages to impose Flash to everyone, which is very unlikely and is not ideal for smartphones.
The current situation dramatically limits innovation.
So frustrating!!
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Twitter Hype or the Birth of Social Life-Logging
You can't have avoided the incredible growth of Twitter (~3M unique visitors by the end of 2008), the buzz it has triggered, and all the ecosystem of startups wanting to reinvent everything on twitter, "twitterizing the world".
Twitter allows you to answer the question "What are you doing?", continuously through short messages (less than 140 chars), and broadcast them to people that care about you (or about what you're talking of). Of course a micro-blog is also a general blog, but so short you only send links or pictures when you're not describing your amazing personal actions.
Micro-blogging follows the typical hype curve, where people think it can do everything, then are disappointed and think it can't do anything, to finish by framing the service at its right place.
We're just currently at the "peak of inflated expectations", as Twitter started in 2006.
So what is micro-blogging's right place?
I tried micro-blogging, I saw my friends try micro-blogging (twitter, friendfeed, etc.).
At first sight, I could not see any steady long-term interest: as soon as you're using Facebook / Plaxo pulse / Linked-in / Viadeo, they all feature the "status update" that provides the core functionalities of Twitter. All your friends and business contacts are in, why use another service?
We have to acknowledge the strength of micro-blogging: Twitter survived critical failures in platform availability, and despite its scaling problem, more users registered and more services built on twitter have appeared. Its viral characteristics are not enough to explain this steady growth.
Let's do a flashback and compare it to ICQ: this tool opened the way to a new kind of "micro-communication", that was classified as Instant Messaging.
Chats, IM & SMS are a way to micro-communicate with your social network, non invasive, efficient, complementary to phone and email.
Does micro-blogging belongs to this "micro-communication" trend, with a simple public archiving addition? According to me, it is much deeper than this, but we only see the beginning now.
Futuroptions prospective: micro-blogging will evolve into generalized social life-logging. (please comment on this!)
Life-logging is the area of recording your life and transferring automatically your lived experiences to other people. See here more detailed definition & explanations.
We will love life-logging, because it will tell us where we were 3 years ago, which city we visited during this trip, who we met at this party, what we heard in that conference, etc, without planning it or organizing it.
It will allow us to track back our past, live our experiences again much better than today's recording such as photos or videos. And it will empower us with the ability to transmit our experiences to other people.
What we can observe is that micro-blogging is a declared and active way of doing life-logging to your social network (or more broadly).
We can however expect in the future that we'll have all kind of devices and software that will auto-generate the micro-blogging feeds cleverly.
Typically, on us, our mobile phone will record our position, who we are meeting with, take pictures, videos, sound capture, emotional capture, etc. of our environment to be able to recreate this experience to others. The software will rearrange, filter, connect all this information to our social network according to our preferences. It will surely go much further than that.
On top of that, we'll add a few "human expressions", radically different of today's micro-blogging content, but clearly inspired by the services being developed today.
All this remains to be invented and adapted to people willingness...
Which options are you going to follow?
Twitter allows you to answer the question "What are you doing?", continuously through short messages (less than 140 chars), and broadcast them to people that care about you (or about what you're talking of). Of course a micro-blog is also a general blog, but so short you only send links or pictures when you're not describing your amazing personal actions.
Micro-blogging follows the typical hype curve, where people think it can do everything, then are disappointed and think it can't do anything, to finish by framing the service at its right place.
We're just currently at the "peak of inflated expectations", as Twitter started in 2006.
So what is micro-blogging's right place?
I tried micro-blogging, I saw my friends try micro-blogging (twitter, friendfeed, etc.).
At first sight, I could not see any steady long-term interest: as soon as you're using Facebook / Plaxo pulse / Linked-in / Viadeo, they all feature the "status update" that provides the core functionalities of Twitter. All your friends and business contacts are in, why use another service?
We have to acknowledge the strength of micro-blogging: Twitter survived critical failures in platform availability, and despite its scaling problem, more users registered and more services built on twitter have appeared. Its viral characteristics are not enough to explain this steady growth.
Let's do a flashback and compare it to ICQ: this tool opened the way to a new kind of "micro-communication", that was classified as Instant Messaging.
Chats, IM & SMS are a way to micro-communicate with your social network, non invasive, efficient, complementary to phone and email.
Does micro-blogging belongs to this "micro-communication" trend, with a simple public archiving addition? According to me, it is much deeper than this, but we only see the beginning now.
Futuroptions prospective: micro-blogging will evolve into generalized social life-logging. (please comment on this!)
Life-logging is the area of recording your life and transferring automatically your lived experiences to other people. See here more detailed definition & explanations.
We will love life-logging, because it will tell us where we were 3 years ago, which city we visited during this trip, who we met at this party, what we heard in that conference, etc, without planning it or organizing it.
It will allow us to track back our past, live our experiences again much better than today's recording such as photos or videos. And it will empower us with the ability to transmit our experiences to other people.
What we can observe is that micro-blogging is a declared and active way of doing life-logging to your social network (or more broadly).
We can however expect in the future that we'll have all kind of devices and software that will auto-generate the micro-blogging feeds cleverly.
Typically, on us, our mobile phone will record our position, who we are meeting with, take pictures, videos, sound capture, emotional capture, etc. of our environment to be able to recreate this experience to others. The software will rearrange, filter, connect all this information to our social network according to our preferences. It will surely go much further than that.
On top of that, we'll add a few "human expressions", radically different of today's micro-blogging content, but clearly inspired by the services being developed today.
All this remains to be invented and adapted to people willingness...
Which options are you going to follow?
Sunday, September 14, 2008
[FR] Analyse de Google Chrome
Google Chrome arrive sur un marché encombré par :
Sur les téléphones mobiles :
Quelle importance, tous ces navigateurs ?
Le navigateur est vu par tous comme le système d'exploitation de demain.
Quand on gère ses mails, ses documents, ses sites, ses photos, ses vidéos et qu'on collabore via le navigateur, l'OS devient complètement secondaire. Celui qui contrôle le navigateur pourra en revanche dicter sa loi sur la façon dont on écrit des applications web, et avoir accès à des fonctions réservées à lui seul pour améliorer ses propres services. Ou rendre incompatible le navigateur avec des services concurrents ("bugs malenconteux"), comme cela arrive aujourd'hui avec Windows. Cela procure un avantage concurrentiel fondamental.
A quel type de compétition assiste-t-on ?
Mis à part Microsoft, c'est une compétition Open Source, et cela change radicalement la donne.
Apple Safari vient de WebKit, qui a été développé par la communauté KDE sous Linux (Konqueror).
Apple a contribué à le développer, notamment sur le mobile.
Mozilla Firefox vient de feu Netscape et a été entièrement réécrit par une communauté de développeurs de logiciel libre.
Google Chrome utilise WebKit (comme Safari), ajoute un peu de code de Firefox, et un moteur Javascript "V8" écrit par Google, mais Open Source également. Google a débauché un certain nombre de développeurs de très haut niveau de Firefox.
On assiste donc rapidement à des progrès spectaculaires des navigateurs, d'une part par la réutilisation du coeur des autres produits, et d'autre part par les centaines de millions de dollars investis au vu de l'importance du navigateur.
Que vaut Google Chrome ?
Chrome est très compatible avec l'ensemble du web (même moteur de rendu que Safari).
Son interface est très simple et très efficace, l'installation est facile et l'utilisation intuitive. La page d'accueil a été repensée, la barre de recherche et les onglets aussi. Tout est bien intégré, notamment la recherche sur Google (on peut quand même choisir un autre moteur de recherche).
Chrome sait réutiliser les modules de flash et d'adobe reader (pdf) déjà installés.
Chrome est plus fiable, car il isole chaque site et évite un plantage en cascade.
Chrome est plus rapide :
Chrome inclus Google Gears, technologie pour faire tourner *offline* les applications web.
(Gears contient une bdd sqllite et une mini serveur local, il faut que l'application soit spécialement écrite pour cela). Google annonce d'ailleurs Gears pour Safari. Apparemment pas beaucoup de succès de cette techno pour l'instant, en compétition avec Adobe AIR et Java.
Pas de plug-ins en revanche, avant la vraie version finale (firefox en a déjà des milliers).
Pas de version Mac ni Linux avant la version finale non plus. Chrome est encore dépendant de certaines parties windows, les certificats SSL clients (cf. interfaces bleues) sont encore les purs wizards d'IE.
Pourquoi une beta maintenant ?
Deux raisons :
Quel navigateur à l'avenir, qui va s'imposer ?
Pour Firefox:
Google fournit 85% des revenus de la Fondataion Mozilla (page d'accueil Firefox cherche sur Google), à savoir 55 M$.
La concurrence de navigateurs + baisse des moyens financiers + puissance media de Google pourraient bien avoir la peau de Firefox à moyen terme. Le CEO de Mozilla doit sentir comme une corde autour du cou. On peut néanmoins encore avoir des surprises, OpenOffice 3 (soutenu par Sun) se lie à Mozilla Thunderbird, et des sociétés comme Oracle ou IBM ne sont pas encore descendues dans l'arène...
La clef, c'est le mobile:
Au vu des betas d'Android, nous devrions tous finir sous Apple iPhone ou sous un téléphone Google Android.
Windows Mobile est out, complètement dépassé. Nokia pourrait essayer des choses sous Linux mais a priori finira sous Android (qui a un noyau Linux aussi).
En conséquence, les navigateurs sur les mobiles seront Safari et Chrome.
Exit IE, exit Firefox, exit Opéra.
On pourrait alors avoir en cascade (pour meilleure compatibilité) Safari et Chrome qui s'imposent sur les PCs, mais c'est loin loin d'être gagné et les années à venir seront un mélange d'IE (toujours majoritaire mais mauvais), de Firefox, de Google Chrome et d'Apple Safari.
Cela dépendra aussi de la santé de Steve Jobs, dont Apple dépend. Cela dépendra de la qualité (!) de Windows Seven successeur de Vista.
Google, Apple et Microsoft sont tous les 3 prêts à investir des milliards pour leurs navigateurs.
S'il n'y avait pas de fossé culturel, j'aurais bien vu Microsoft racheter Firefox, mais Mozilla préfèrera crever.
En revanche nous devrions avoir une amélioration générale de la compatibilité entre navigateurs, car celui qui ne jouera pas le jeu sera exclu de la course. Ouf !
Le feuilleton ne fait que commencer...
Ah dernière chose. Si Google s'impose, il saura de vous :
quelles pages web vous visitez (Chrome), vos recherches sur Internet (Google Search & Adwords), vos emails et à qui vous écrivez (GMail), où vous êtes (Google Maps avec géolocalisation), vos photos (Picasa), vos videos (YouTube), ce que vous payez (Google Checkout), votre emploi du temps (Google Calendar), vos documents office (Google Docs), etc, etc...
Microsoft a du bon, non ? {;-))
- Microsoft Internet Explorer, 70%+ de part de marché, Windows-only (IE7 majoritaire, IE8 en beta2 et prévu pour la fin de l'année)
- Mozilla Firefox, 20% de part de marché, Windows-Mac-Linux (v3 majoritaire, v3.1 en beta et prévue pour la fin de l'année)
- Apple Safari, 6.5% de part de marché, Windows-Mac (v3.1, v4 en préparation)
- Opéra n'a que qques miettes, Windows-Mac-Linux (v9), n'a pas su suivre assez vite, devrait disparaitre définitivement
Sur les téléphones mobiles :
- Apple Safari (iPhone) : 70%+ de la navigation mobile
- Microsoft IE (Windows mobile)
- Opéra sur qques tels Nokia
- Plus tous les navigateurs propriétaires genre Blackberry, Nokia, etc.
Quelle importance, tous ces navigateurs ?
Le navigateur est vu par tous comme le système d'exploitation de demain.
Quand on gère ses mails, ses documents, ses sites, ses photos, ses vidéos et qu'on collabore via le navigateur, l'OS devient complètement secondaire. Celui qui contrôle le navigateur pourra en revanche dicter sa loi sur la façon dont on écrit des applications web, et avoir accès à des fonctions réservées à lui seul pour améliorer ses propres services. Ou rendre incompatible le navigateur avec des services concurrents ("bugs malenconteux"), comme cela arrive aujourd'hui avec Windows. Cela procure un avantage concurrentiel fondamental.
A quel type de compétition assiste-t-on ?
Mis à part Microsoft, c'est une compétition Open Source, et cela change radicalement la donne.
Apple Safari vient de WebKit, qui a été développé par la communauté KDE sous Linux (Konqueror).
Apple a contribué à le développer, notamment sur le mobile.
Mozilla Firefox vient de feu Netscape et a été entièrement réécrit par une communauté de développeurs de logiciel libre.
Google Chrome utilise WebKit (comme Safari), ajoute un peu de code de Firefox, et un moteur Javascript "V8" écrit par Google, mais Open Source également. Google a débauché un certain nombre de développeurs de très haut niveau de Firefox.
On assiste donc rapidement à des progrès spectaculaires des navigateurs, d'une part par la réutilisation du coeur des autres produits, et d'autre part par les centaines de millions de dollars investis au vu de l'importance du navigateur.
Que vaut Google Chrome ?
Chrome est très compatible avec l'ensemble du web (même moteur de rendu que Safari).
Son interface est très simple et très efficace, l'installation est facile et l'utilisation intuitive. La page d'accueil a été repensée, la barre de recherche et les onglets aussi. Tout est bien intégré, notamment la recherche sur Google (on peut quand même choisir un autre moteur de recherche).
Chrome sait réutiliser les modules de flash et d'adobe reader (pdf) déjà installés.
Chrome est plus fiable, car il isole chaque site et évite un plantage en cascade.
Chrome est plus rapide :
- Le moteur de Javascript "V8" semble tenir ses promesses de moteur le plus rapide, mais devrait être supplanté bientôt par ceux de Firefox v3.1 et Safari v4.0. Ces derniers utilisent des techniques de compilation "just in time" (comme Java) avec "traced execution" qui sont ce qui se fait de mieux au niveau de la recherche universitaire dans le domaine.
- Il utilise un certain nombre de techniques futées pour accélérer la navigation, comme la résolution par avance des DNS des liens qui sont dans la page actuelle, pour afficher plus rapidement le lien cliqué. Elles devraient être rapidement copiées (si ce n'est déjà fait) par les autres.
Chrome inclus Google Gears, technologie pour faire tourner *offline* les applications web.
(Gears contient une bdd sqllite et une mini serveur local, il faut que l'application soit spécialement écrite pour cela). Google annonce d'ailleurs Gears pour Safari. Apparemment pas beaucoup de succès de cette techno pour l'instant, en compétition avec Adobe AIR et Java.
Pas de plug-ins en revanche, avant la vraie version finale (firefox en a déjà des milliers).
Pas de version Mac ni Linux avant la version finale non plus. Chrome est encore dépendant de certaines parties windows, les certificats SSL clients (cf. interfaces bleues) sont encore les purs wizards d'IE.
Pourquoi une beta maintenant ?
Deux raisons :
- La première est la sortie d'ici la fin de l'année d'Android, l'OS de Google pour téléphone mobile. Android utilise WebKit et utilisera probablement la version finale de Google Chrome. Il faut donc vérifier que Chrome fonctionne bien avec le web et qu'il ne va pas plomber Android.
- La deuxième est que Chrome ne va pas rester longtemps le plus rapide et qu'il aurait été difficile de l'annoncer en étant plus lent {;-)
Quel navigateur à l'avenir, qui va s'imposer ?
Pour Firefox:
Google fournit 85% des revenus de la Fondataion Mozilla (page d'accueil Firefox cherche sur Google), à savoir 55 M$.
La concurrence de navigateurs + baisse des moyens financiers + puissance media de Google pourraient bien avoir la peau de Firefox à moyen terme. Le CEO de Mozilla doit sentir comme une corde autour du cou. On peut néanmoins encore avoir des surprises, OpenOffice 3 (soutenu par Sun) se lie à Mozilla Thunderbird, et des sociétés comme Oracle ou IBM ne sont pas encore descendues dans l'arène...
La clef, c'est le mobile:
Au vu des betas d'Android, nous devrions tous finir sous Apple iPhone ou sous un téléphone Google Android.
Windows Mobile est out, complètement dépassé. Nokia pourrait essayer des choses sous Linux mais a priori finira sous Android (qui a un noyau Linux aussi).
En conséquence, les navigateurs sur les mobiles seront Safari et Chrome.
Exit IE, exit Firefox, exit Opéra.
On pourrait alors avoir en cascade (pour meilleure compatibilité) Safari et Chrome qui s'imposent sur les PCs, mais c'est loin loin d'être gagné et les années à venir seront un mélange d'IE (toujours majoritaire mais mauvais), de Firefox, de Google Chrome et d'Apple Safari.
Cela dépendra aussi de la santé de Steve Jobs, dont Apple dépend. Cela dépendra de la qualité (!) de Windows Seven successeur de Vista.
Google, Apple et Microsoft sont tous les 3 prêts à investir des milliards pour leurs navigateurs.
S'il n'y avait pas de fossé culturel, j'aurais bien vu Microsoft racheter Firefox, mais Mozilla préfèrera crever.
En revanche nous devrions avoir une amélioration générale de la compatibilité entre navigateurs, car celui qui ne jouera pas le jeu sera exclu de la course. Ouf !
Le feuilleton ne fait que commencer...
Ah dernière chose. Si Google s'impose, il saura de vous :
quelles pages web vous visitez (Chrome), vos recherches sur Internet (Google Search & Adwords), vos emails et à qui vous écrivez (GMail), où vous êtes (Google Maps avec géolocalisation), vos photos (Picasa), vos videos (YouTube), ce que vous payez (Google Checkout), votre emploi du temps (Google Calendar), vos documents office (Google Docs), etc, etc...
Microsoft a du bon, non ? {;-))
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