Where Google fits in
The difference is that in the case of Chrome, Google has opened the application up to everyone. You'll have the inevitable clones and branches, programming evolution dictates that somebody's gonna come up with a few cool tricks that Google never though of, and those tricks will be rolled into the next major official release. The allure of the whole "cloud" architecture is that as a person who has a office wokstation, a home workstation and a primary laptop, as well as severay ancilliary systems, I would prefer to take my browser with me. Based on the very way Google Chrome is built, and given that i't not goint to take long to get FF-style plugins built for it, I see myself using the "same" broiwser, all settings intact, wherever I am. I'm sure everyone reading this remembers an instance of reading some article, or finding some site or reference somewhere on one PC, and then being at another location wishing you could access the history from the first. I'll make the bold prediction that Chrome is going to offer some hook into your Google (read GMail) account that will serve as an online history, bookmarks, & etc. Google by now really should be the owner of delicious, and (should leave the core engine well enough alone, no ad insertion please) and it should be a core feature. Next, google chrome should run swiftyl towards adopting Developer's Toolbar as a core feature. Do those things, try to add in IE and FF emulation, and google can take the market starting with the developers. Those developers will recommend ti to their family, friends and clients, and that's how you really shift the "paradigm".
