Today Google released their new browser, Chrome. It's very pretty, sleek, and it implements an idea that's a been sorely needed in the browser space for a long time.

Chrome separates each tab into its own process, so if a page or plugin (*cough* Flash *cough*) causes a crash, it can only take out that tab. The rest of your tabs and browser instances keep going on their own.

This has been desperately needed in browsers for years. Most people keep at least one, and often several browser instances open at all times so it's quite a nuisance when some silly plugin brings the whole show down. Firefox has made some kludges to handle this, like the ability to restore a session after a crash, and they probably would have moved in this direction eventually.

Chrome also has a new, streamlined Javascript engine, v8. This, along with the robustness that a multi-process browser brings, makes Chrome an excellent platform for the web applications (like Gmail and Google Docs).

That's what Chrome is really about. If they can get it installed widely, they (and anyone else) can make an end run around Microsoft's OS monopoly. The clincher is an open document standard, which is why Microsoft has been fighting the Open Document standard so viciously, and trying to force their proprietary format through the ISO process. Without that, Microsoft can hold on to their OS monopoly by withholding Office from any serious competitors.

There are a few disappointments with Chrome. There's no ad filtering, and as yet no extension mechanism to implement it (though they've promised to rectify the latter).

Google is, of course, not going to be terribly keen about people stripping advertisements from the web, but they also will have to face the fact that it's necessary. I realize they have to walk a fine line with this, but they're in a great position to help mediate between the extremes of filtering absolutely everything (as many Firefox users do with Adblock Plus and EasyList/Element) and the downright offensive lengths some advertisers will go to to annoy the crap out of people.

Google could start a clearing house for web advertising with a voluntary code of conduct requiring advertisers to tag their ads appropriately for filtering by the browser. Public key encryption could be used to verify that an ad is released by a member in good standing. Users who don't want to see animated ads, ads with sound, ads for porn or whatever could filter those and let less obnoxious advertising through to support the sites they visit. There could even be an automatic negotiation between the browser and ad server. A user who may be willing to accept text ads could be presented with those instead of being forced to block all ads to keep the annoying ones out.

Steven Harper is pushing hard to call a snap election in the next week or so. Canadian election law mandates a 6 week campaign, so we'd actually be at the polls no earlier than mid-October.

Why is Harper so keen on an election right now? The political landscape isn't really in his favour; the best he could hope for would be another Conservative minority government. That's not in his personal best interest, as it would likely result in his position being reassessed by the party.

Harper claims that the current parliament is dysfunctional, but that clearly isn't the case. By any objective measurement, this parliament has been extremely compliant in its minority status. The Conservatives have gotten quite a bit of their agenda through, which is unusual in a minority parliament, especially considering that they have no real allies in the other parties.

Dion has suggested that Harper wants to preempt several by-elections that have been called, and that he wants to avoid committee hearings on Conservative scandals. I don't think that's really it. Yes, the Liberals would get a bit of momentum from wins in the by-elections, but that's not certain and hardly fatal anyway. The committee hearings are important, but they haven't gotten much traction in the public view.

In my view, Harper is terrified of Obama. Improved relations with the US was the primary selling point the Conservatives used in the last election and that would be squarely on the Liberal's side with Obama in the Whitehouse. Further, it'd be seen as inappropriate for the Liberals to assume that Obama will be the president before he's elected, so Harper is desperate to get Canadians to the polls before November 4th.

Psystar has laid out its defence plans against Apple. They will be suing them under the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act arguing that tying OS X to Apple hardware is monopolistic.

Slashdot has picked up on Firefox 3's terrible certificate management system, pointing to this article. While I'm rather critical of Mozilla's handling of this, they're in the right in this case.

The article in question points out several sites with expired certificates getting terrible error messages. This is the right thing to do, those sites should trip a giant "OMGWTF" flag in browsers. They're broken, and the lax treatment they've gotten from browsers in the past has not prompted their admins to fix them.

The problem isn't with legitimate security issues like lapsed certificates, it's the fact that Firefox has effectively banned self-signed certificates for technical illiterates. There are many use cases where commercially available Certificate Authorities are not practical or even outright impossible.

Hardware firewalls, for example, cannot use CA signed certificates. For one, their final sale price is often at or below that of a CA signed certificate for a single year, and for another they won't have a permanent, externally accessible DNS name to certify. It's fine to say that users of commercial grade equipment should be able to add exceptions, but your average Mom & Pop with a $50 Linksys firewall probably won't manage.

This change won't result in better security. It can only result in either people deciding Firefox doesn't work, or that configuring their routers is just too hard. Hundreds of thousands of identical systems running with default passwords open to the wider internet will not make the world a better place.

Psystar, the plucky little Mac clone company, is still selling its wares despite the legal bullying of Apple. They've hired some pretty heavy hitters themselves, so I'm not quite convinced they're really doing this on their own.

Regardless, I wish them luck. If they can force Apple to accept commoditized hardware it will be a big win for the whole industry, Apple included.

Well, except for Microsoft.