I wouldn’t know. I haven’t read any of it…yet.  Instead, I just offer my first, untainted-by-the-blogosphere thoughts on Google Chrome, after using it for all of 4 hours.  My first impression is that the browser is fast.  Very fast.  Chrome has got some fantastic engine under that hood.  Beyond the speed, the other thing which Chrome seems to do well is display websites as they were intended to be seen.  This is good news for web designers, who rightfully have been wondering what yet another browser would do to their carefully crafted stylesheets and layouts.  Of course, the devil is in the details when it comes to user experience and my brief test drive of Chrome is by no means scientifically conclusive.   

As with all new interfaces, there will be grumbling from some about the way Chrome does this or that, compared to interfaces we already have adapted into our lives (e.g. Firefox, IE, Opera, and co.).  However, I found the learning curve to be uncomplicated and quick.  In fact, after just a few minutes of obligatory exploration and playing around with the settings, I barely even noticed the browser.  Put another way, Chrome stepped out of the spotlight and left me to just surf the net.  When an interface no longer insists on being the focus of our attentions, we are free to focus on what we really want to accomplish, which is use the web.  Now that is an accomplishment.

I don’t know what will happen to the browser market, which product will gain or lose market share, or what will become of Mozilla and their still running contract with Google.  Those predictions are for the analysts who live and breath this kind of stuff to make.  I do think the entry of Google into the browser market has the potential to spark a new renaissance in browser development, with fierce competition and rapid innovation once again in the forefront.  Web consumers will rejoice at the things to come.  Now, if only we could see the same level of competition in the search engine space.

I needed to get people’s attention. I needed better marketing…maybe a gimmick.

Marketing basics from a preschooler, with an evil twist.

Devil Take the Hindmost. A brilliant exposé on the nature of speculation and the human tendency to occassionally go mad. Edward Chancellor’s book is about the financial markets, but I’ve always believed that studying other realms of knowledge brings greater understanding of one’s own area of expertise — often better insight than reading blogs and books published within your field.

So, what insight does Devil Take the Hindmost offer the marketer? We’ve been told that markets are efficient and that crowds are wise. If you haven’t heard these concepts, then consider the following: why else would we place so much value in websites that encourage community tagging of content, search engines that rank sites based on the number of links from related websites, and markets that try to predict future events based on user voting? The Efficient Market Hypothesis (to borrow the term from economists) and the wisdom of crowds are two fundamental assumptions underlying Web2.0 and all those budding social networks, predictive markets, pageranking systems, peer-to-peer sharing communities, and user-produced content on the internet. We can debate about how these ideas from the economics and financial world came to be the premises of today’s internet, but suffice it to say that Web2.0 is not the only realm affected. Modern business, with its emphasis on shareholder value, its reliance on the capital asset pricing model, and its focus on stock-option compensation, is also predicated on efficient markets.

But, are markets really efficient or do markets move according some other, less well understood factors? Are crowds really wise or do they exhibit the same failings and irrational choices of individuals? Devil Take the Hindmost, not unlike Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan, takes a hard-hitting swing at the ideas of efficient markets and the wisdom of crowds. Chancellor provides us with a wealth of historical examples from ancient history to modern times (but pre-dotcom era) where the markets have bubbled and crowds have gone a bit ga-ga, throwing out all rationality in the blind pursuit of profits. Such things clearly shouldn’t occur in a truly efficient market, a fact that has not been lost on a few speculators who make their living exploiting the herd reactions of the crowd and the betting on uncertainty. Apply this same experience to the internet sector, where the wisdom of the crowd (usually referred to as the “user community”) is an article of faith, and you being to wonder if certain business models are built on a house of cards.