Boom! Google integrates Chrome apps into the Mac OS X Finder
Google's strategy to use the Chrome browser as a desktop replacement took another step forward on Friday. Users of Chrome Canary, an experimental version of Google's browser, can now associate Mac files with supporting Chrome apps in the Finder.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Finder hook is the Mac leg of a strategy Google has been assembling in public since at least September 2013, when The Verge framed Chrome Apps as a Trojan horse against Windows. Google had already pushed Chrome OS into Windows 8 that October, and in January brought Chrome apps to Android and iOS with store submissions on both platforms.
What changed on Friday is the file system: in Chrome Canary, Mac files can be associated with supporting Chrome apps directly from Finder, so a Chrome app opens like any native application. The pickup was unusually broad for a developer-channel feature — Engadget, 9to5Mac, MacRumors, Computerworld and others all ran it within a day, reflecting how closely the Apple-watch press tracks Google's moves into Mac territory.
First-order effects
- Mac users on Chrome Canary get native-feeling file handling for Chrome apps — double-clicking a document in Finder launches the browser-hosted app rather than forcing users through the browser first.
- Developers building for Chrome's app platform gain parity with Mac-native apps on the single most basic integration point, file associations, without writing a separate Mac binary.
Second-order effects
- Apple now hosts a Google-controlled application layer inside OS X, mirroring what Microsoft already conceded when Google built Chrome OS straight into Windows 8 — both incumbent desktop vendors are carrying their competitor's runtime.
- With Chrome apps shippable across desktop and mobile stores since January, cross-platform developers face a lower-cost path than maintaining native builds per OS, pressuring Apple and Microsoft on developer mindshare.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the operating system's role shrinks to hosting whichever vendor controls the app runtime and file-handling layer — the same thin-client endgame Google sketched when it morphed Chrome OS into a netbook thin client back in 2010, now arriving incrementally on other companies' hardware.
The trend: Google is reassembling Chrome OS piece by piece on top of rivals' operating systems, with Finder file associations as the newest plank after Windows 8 integration and mobile ports.