The analogy you're looking for is wheels and cars. Once upon a time, wheels were a pretty neat invention. Carts pulled by horses were mostly wheels. What Google has done is invent the car. The car can't run without wheels, sure, but they've suddenly become insignificant. It doesn't matter what kind of wheels you have on your car. Nobody cares about wheels. What they care about is the car, and where it can take them.

With Chrome, Google has shown how the operating system is irrelevant. What matters is the online services you use. Chrome is an evolutionary leap forward.

In a stroke, Microsoft has become irrelevant. Microsoft will never go away, because they're too rich for that, but they will become irrelevant. Think about IBM, or Sun... These are companies whose days have passed, and which have become irrelevant. Microsoft is joining them. The future belongs to Google. Google is like a manufacturing plant with entirely the right toolset to produce stuff we want. Nobody else comes close. Microsoft or Yahoo! could try retooling, but their core competencies are elsewhere. They haven't got a hope.

What's been very frustrating over the last few days since Chrome was announced is people comparing it to Internet Explorer. That's like comparing chalk and cheese. Chrome isn't really a browser. It's an application platform. That it can access websites is a by-product, almost. Indeed, I currently use Firefox for general browsing, and Chrome to access Google Docs. This doesn't feel strange.