The cat is finally out of the bag about Google’s browser. Clearly, another step towards the web 2.0 ecosystem delivered by Google. What next? A mobile version.

Of course, it makes sense. The battle for the browser is still on. It never really went away after the IE v Navigator days. It’s all about the ecosystem. Sure, some vendors are out there making money from mobile browser licenses, but those days are rapidly receding.

You see, it really is all about the ecosystem. Moan all you want about the launch woes of Mobile Me, but it’s a truly fantastic service. Yep, you have to be a complete Mac-head to gain all the benefits, but then that’s a smart move by Apple. Those who have experienced the Mac universe don’t want to go back. They know - and this is no hype - that the Mac world really does make a difference to productivity. It all just works - together - seamlessly (Motorola still don’t get what that word means). It actually saves time and money.

Things working together - seamlessly - is the promise of the IT revolution finally delivered. And, it’s all coming together on the web. That experience still starts, and possibly ends, with the browser. It’s a vital piece of the puzzle. But this is a world where increasingly we use more than one browser. One on the laptop, one on the desktop, one on the mobile - perhaps more than one mobile, a trend clearly underway in many markets.

We need - and want - all this stuff to work together seamlessly. And, as the browser makes its move towards the platform for rich internet applications and rich mobile applications, the promise of seamless experience across all devices moves one step closer to reality.

We hardly notice perhaps, but look at all those bits and pieces of functionality that float around in the Google universe - the tiny presence indicator inside the Gmail UI - the address book that magically appears across all their apps - try to share a spreadsheet or Google doc and all those names are at our fingertips. With persistent web apps on the phone, it’s easy to spread this seamless goodness to the mobile experience. Even easier if the browsers ‘talk’ to each other.

And that’s exactly how things should be. This is where the operators consistently fail to make an impression. They haven’t understood ecosystems at all. They still talk of messaging and phone books as if these have meaning in their own right. That’s so old hat. Users (and I hate that word), especially the only-ever-known-the-web generation (don’t know how to use a library - ‘what’s that?’) don’t want messaging and address books. They want connection, meaning, social power, gossip power, influence, and all these other human (i.e. non-machinesque things) experiences that messaging and address books can deliver. Let’s face it (and forgive the pun) - Facebook is the new address book. And Facebook fans are messaging in there all the time - they just don’t call it messaging. Not long now, I predict that we won’t know what an inbox is - it will become as meaningless as it already is.

The mobile future is all about how to plumb that pervasive device ‘formerly known as the phone’ seamlessly into our daily digital lives. Being as how these lives are increasingly lived in the web, via the browser, then the browser remains a critical ‘enabler’ in the ecosystem wars that we are now in. If I were serious about ecosystem domination, I would be in the browser wars too. It’s where the address book wars - and others like it - will be fought and won.

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