Product innovators dilemma: how do you build a 15 inch black tire that stands out?
If you worked in product engineering at Bridgestone, you would relate to the folks who work on the IE team at Microsoft. Internet browsers, like car tires, are a hard space to be in- it’s nearly impossible to build a truly differentiated product. Innovation is mostly centered around minute obscurities, or engineering hacks to play catch-up with competition.
You’d imagine this is not a market for insurgents, and then came Chrome.
A good example of Google’s re-imagination of the internet browser is my favorite new feature- bookmark-sync, now available on the dev-build channel.
Using the Google Docs service, Chrome now let’s you synchronize browser bookmarks across multiple computers (/devices). I think it’s a standout example of product improvement through a cloud based service (Software-backed-by-a-service?). Win7/Mesh is another great example. Give it a shot, I’m sure you’ll find it useful.
*Safari has had this feature for a while but you must pay a ransom for the MobileMe service. And, I don’t do Mac!
