Chrome is 5. And what a fantastic journey it's been

E=mc2: The most famous equation in the world. Not (arguably) the most important equation in the world of physics. Not even a singular achievement for which its creator won the Nobel Prize.

(That was for his research in the field of “photoelectric effect”: something that sounds a whole lot more frightening than this innocuous equation.) And yet it is the most famous equation in the world.

Have you ever wondered why it reached such heights of popularity, why it graces the walls of many a building and why it’s scrawled across so many T-shirts? I have. And I think I know why. It’s because the equation is simple. While physics is flooded with equations stretching multiple lines of script, with strange symbols inserted within, E=mc2 is simple. And simplicity is elegance.

Celebrating only its sixth year, the Google Chrome browser has knocked Internet Explorer off its perch and left Firefox in tatters in its wake. Its success is not unprecedented.

In the field of technology, the first-mover advantage does not always last long. Apple introduced the GUI, but Microsoft ruled the personal computer world with it.

Symbian popularised one of the first stable touch operating systems, but the iOS ran away with it. Internet Explorer bucked this trend for a while: IE kept itself way above other browsers for more than a decade. But one did not expect its domination to vanish in such haste.

Even Firefox, despite all the novelties it had to offer, and the market share it gained, never really got a chance to beat IE. And yet, Google Chrome has swooped in and stolen the browser crown.

Technically speaking, some of the features of Google Chrome like the DOM Bindings, it’s extremely effective UI responsiveness, DNS Pre-Resolution, the V8 Project does get the best of all the solutions in one place; but as far as I can remember, the first thing I noticed when I started using Chrome years ago was its minimalism.

All the browser had was one bar to type stuff in, a small icon right beside it, and a little tab above it to demarcate the different...well... tabs. No menu bars, no separate search bar, nothing. I looked at it with trepidation, and then I typed my url into the address bar. And then, I typed my search query in the address bar. And then, a few hours later, I couldn’t imagine why it took Google so long to come up with this brilliant piece of software.

Over the years Google improved what was fast becoming a replacement for Firefox. IE had been left far behind by then, in terms of usability. The updates came rapidly. The browser became faster and surer. Simple yet effective shortcuts were built into the browser. The latest web concepts were embraced.

While IE bulked itself up with inessential functions, Chrome became leaner. By around the fourth year of inception, it plugged the one conspicuous hole it had: it expanded its app store. Firefox was no longer the only browser with killer extensions. IE’s add-ons were more of a bother than a blessing. Chrome had caught up on all fronts.

Reports of Chrome fast gaining popularity were no surprise.

This was a great product. And Google was no Netscape.

The creators pushed updates even more feverishly. The browser was decided faster than all of its competitors. It looked much better. And it was easier to use.

The result? By early 2012 the unthinkable had happened: Microsoft had been beaten.

Over the years, as Google continued its lateral development on other projects (think Android, Google Glasses, Chromebook), it enmeshed Chrome into its vast and efficient integrated services.

If you used Chrome on your Android (introduced in mid-2012), your history was synced seamlessly with your desktop Chrome. Bookmarks were linked up as well, as were search results. Also over the years, Google continued, unsurprisingly, to incorporate the latest in web development into the browser.

Html5 tests beat all its competitors’ benchmarks, and surfing speeds always matched them. Chrome was clearly no longer an infant in the browser family. It had grown up rapidly and it had outmatched, outfought and outperformed the rest.

Today, six years after it started, Chrome generates 43% of all desktop-generated web traffic. IE generates 25%.
Sometimes, the hardest thing to do is to make things simple. Chrome made web browsing simple. And that is why it deserves its place at the top.

If it continues developing the way it has, Chrome is here to stay on top for a long time, until someone else figures out the next simple innovation! Like the Beetles said, “Take a sad song and make it better!”, this is what Google did. Cheers to Google, and happy birthday Chrome!

(The author is CEO, Lucideus Technologies)