Google introduces a new Chrome webpage sharing feature in version 77, letting users easily send links to other devices where they use Chrome
Not available on macOS just yet — Google is starting to make its Chrome 77 browser update available to Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android this week.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is another step in Chrome's long march from a page renderer toward a sync layer. Earlier moves set the pattern: Chrome 66 shipped developer-facing features across Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android in 2018, and Android-side Chrome notifications pulled eBay, Facebook, and Pinterest onto the platform back in 2015 — both extending the browser's job beyond displaying pages.
Version 77's sharing feature completes the loop in the other direction: instead of pulling content into Chrome, users push links out to every other device where they are signed in. Notably, macOS is excluded at launch even though Google is shipping the update there, so the feature arrives unevenly across the very platforms it is meant to stitch together.
First-order effects
- Users signed into Chrome on Windows, iOS, and Android can send a webpage straight to their other devices, replacing the copy-a-link-to-yourself workaround; Mac users get the update but not yet the sharing capability.
Second-order effects
- Every link sent through Chrome reinforces the signed-in Google account as the connector between devices — the same gravity that later produced [[a:842279|Nearby Share for Windows, which extended Google's device-to-device bridge from links to full file transfers]].
Third-order effects
- If each release keeps adding account-bound conveniences of this kind, Chrome's switching cost stops being bookmarks or passwords and becomes the cross-device fabric itself — a structural advantage rivals can only match by building equivalent account-level sync of their own.
The trend: Browsers are being rebuilt as cross-device continuity layers, where the vendor's account rather than any single device becomes what users actually log into.