Google's Sergey Brin Denies Chrome Is OS for Web Apps

Google co-founder Sergey Brin says the new Chrome Web browser is not the Web operating system many people see it as, but acknowledges it will get more robust through the open-source community under the Chromium project. Microsoft and other search engines and Web services providers must be wary about this evolution in application development. Google may be treading lightly with Chrome now, but the browser, combined with Google's search and Apps, could end up being a big threat to Microsoft Windows' market share.

Despite attempts by reporters to goad Google into spiking Microsoft, Google co-founder Sergey Brin denied that Google views its new Chrome browser as an operating system for Web applications.

"I would not call Chrome the operating system of Web apps," Brin said after a demo of Chrome Sept. 2 at the company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, where the company released Chrome as an open-source project under the name Chromium. He added:

I think it is a very basic, fast engine [for running] Web apps and I think we'll see more and more Web apps of greater sophistication, all the kinds of things that today are pretty challenging to do on the Web because of browser performance, whether it's image manipulation or even video editing. We think that with Chrome, [apps] will be able to bridge that divide and you're going to be able to do more and more online.

Brin hedged his comments by adding that Chrome is just step one and that the platform under the open-source community will make it more robust and powerful.

Okay, so Brin might not want to proclaim Chrome as the Web OS to supplant Microsoft's entrenched Windows operating system yet, but it's clear from his comments that Google is moving in that direction. So far, so good. eWEEK's Jim Rapoza applauds Chrome in his review here.

When Google accidentally leaked its Chrome comic book Sept. 1, reporters and analysts, including yours truly and my colleague Joe Wilcox, argued that Google could make Chrome the premier Web operating system by combining it with its market-leading search engine and increasingly popular SAAS (software as a service) applications. This would eventually constitute a threat to Windows.

And that would spell doom for Microsoft. It's one thing to squeeze Microsoft out of the Internet game by dominating search and Web services. It's another entirely to come after the software giant's core operating system business, wielding the Web as your platform.

However, Google executives refused to paint Chrome as the technological torpedo that I and others believe it could be versus Microsoft and other Web browser makers such as Mozilla and Opera.