Google Chrome for the Enterprise?

Google's Chrome is an impressive little beta. Performant? Check... Slick? You bet... More intelligence packed into navigation? Yup... Developer tools baked in? As warm as apple pie...

But does Google Chrome have an Enterprise twinkle in its eye?

A few things to be excited about:

1. javascript running in a VM
   As the Google Chrome Comic Book states running JS within a VM allows the browser to optimize javascript and actually compile the structure into machine code so that "interpreted" code is not over-interpreted. Chrome is supposed to be fast. And this should make Knowledge Workers with 40+ tabs, happy.
2. process-level isolation
   Process per tab, process per site. every app, be it web app or a component of Chrome runs as it's own application. Many benefits to this, e.g. crashes are limited to impacted process/tab, resources are allocated to active tab not the entire browser, jail-like security per process, and so on. This design boosts overall stability of the browser.
3. developer tools baked in
   Beginnings of a superb JavaScript debugger and analyzer. Dom element highlighting, in-line style info, style metrics and element properties. And the niftiest addition: web-page performance analytics with charts. I'm sure someone will do a punch-for-punch againt Firefox's FireBug extension.
4. wrench->options->under the hood->change proxy settings
   Looks like Connection Settings are delegated to Internet Explorer's - now that's interesting. This means that Group Policies that govern IE's settings can also apply to Google Chrome. I wonder what else can be managed...
5. about:memory
   Measures memory usage of this multi-threaded browser
6. about:plugins
   There is an about:plugins page that shows loaded plugins. Looks exactly like Firefox's
   

Things to look forward to:

1. Extensions
2. RSS support
3. Spell checker
4. ...and so on...

As for Enterprise-friendliness. Much of our ability to adopt Google Chrome in the enterprise will depend on granular Settings Management for Browser and Gears via a MissionControl-like mechanism or GPO. Enforceable and customizeable Security Zones will permit richer interoperability with the Desktop. Perhaps the extension system will facilitate this with ease. But of couse, this is tbd.

What is Google going after? As a colleague put it, the web browser is the unsung hero of the desktop. It is perhaps the most important application there. But it is not just a gateway to the net. The web browser is an application container in it's own right. The gap between desktop and web apps is quickly shrinking. Gears are not simply an offline mode but perhaps the bridge to interoperability between the web browser and other desktop-bound components. Perhaps we'll see these concepts in play on our mobile devices sooner than on our desktops. Perhaps Google is really after an ad revenue-powered "virtual" desktop for the consumer, reminiscent of what Citrix is trying to do for the enterprise?

As for Enterprise-wide deployment of Google Chrome, we'll have to look at its about:config equivalent first!