[jacquesm]

Chrome does not exist to give the world a fast and performant web, it exists to give google full control over the audience from request to delivery, it exists to increase google's control and serves as a collection mechanism for data that it would not otherwise get at.

That it's a performant browser is a side-effect.

[kalleboo]

There could be multiple equally valid reasons for Chrome to exist.

[IvyMike]

> data that it would not otherwise get at.

My argument is that nobody would have put that data online in a slow and sucky web. If you think Google wants full control over the audience, surely they also want a large audience.

(Note that I do not think that Google is evil. But if they were, I don't think they would need chrome to get most of that information anyways, given all the other ways they are collecting data. Sure, there are some corner cases they would miss but I don't think the incremental coverage would be worth the effort.)

[jacquesm]

The web wasn't 'slow and sucky' before chrome appeared.

[IvyMike]

Christ: my slightly hyperbolic rhetoric aside do you really disagree with anything in the logic chain that a faster web = a more usable web = a more used web = a larger audience = better for google?

[PavlovsCat]

It wasn't even even slow and sucky before Firefox appeared; Opera was pretty nice even in 2000 :)