Google announced a couple things over the last several days. First, Aza Raskin announced his project, "Ubiquity". A couple days later we heard about the new Google web browser, "Chrome".

Let's look at Chrome first. Introduced in the form of a mailed-out comic book (by Scott McCloud, no less! Reminds me of Sir Richard Attenborough in Jurassic Park, "We spared no expense!"), Chrome is Google's upcoming take on what a web-browser should be. Citing webapps and increased use of the browser by end-uses, Google claims that we need them to step in and show us what a browser should be like. They're working on some cool stuff, like process management, javascript interpretation, and task management. They're also doing some stuff that they claim will be amazing, but sounds kinda "meh" to me, like putting the tabs above browser navigation. They're a wacky bunch at Google.

What I'm really excited (and, consequently, frustrated) about, though, is Ubiquity. The potential usefulness is huge, and the potential is absolutely there to change how people interact with the internet. I won't recap it for you, as the best option would be to install it and play with it yourself. I have, and it's cool. The trouble is, until it reaches a point where implementation of Ubiquity on websites matches its name, it'll be kind of a waste for most people.

For example, I don't use Google Calendar or Gmail, though I have an account of each for sharing, synching, and spam-filtering purposes. And, because of that, anything I create with Ubiquity can't actually be used. There's no way, at the moment, for me to tell Ubiquity to create mail in Mail.app, using my Address Book contacts. There's not even a way for me to tell it to use the MobileMe service, instead of Gmail/Google Calendar. So I'm kind of out of luck. Granted, I'm 100% positive that Gmail has way more users than MobileMe does, plus it's being developed by Aza at Google - it makes sense that they'd integrate first with Google products.

My point is kind of different, though. Aza's goal is to make a framework that allows for use of the internet like you'd talk to a secretary. "Joe, I need you to book me a flight tomorrow to Denver, then email my contacts at work, in Denver with my itinerary, and add the event to my calendar." And it gets done. This is the internet for people who are either a) afraid of the internet, or b) don't want to spend the time to figure out how multiple web-apps should best be used together. Ubiquity should take care of that.

But these people aren't hip to Google, necessarily. My Dad would love this, but he's a Mail.app guy. I doubt he even knows about the MobileMe web apps. It's perfect for those people, but they aren't going to get anything out of it, unless Google can do some crazy-magic.

I'll quote John Gruber, as I often do. "That’d be incredible. I’m not holding my breath."