Like many projects in Silicon Valley (see: Twitter), Chrome To Phone started as a mere side project at Google.
Dave Burke, Google’s Engineering Manager for Mobile and the chief architect for Chrome To Phone, was just tinkering around with Google’s third party developer tools in his free time. Fascinated by the divide between mobile and desktop, he stumbled upon Chrome To Phone. “I created an early version that I sent around internally, and then I started getting sort of notes and e-mails from people going ‘Wow, this is really useful, thanks for creating it!’ And over time people started using it more and more because it really just addresses a need today and I guess it just generated some momentum after that,” Burke says.
On Thursday, Google officially launched Chrome to Phone to the public, it’s a useful extension that allows you to push information, like web pages, phone numbers and maps directly from your Chrome browser to your Android phone. Burke says this is just the beginning, he has a laundry list of functions he plans to build. Next up? An update that will reverse the path, to Phone To Chrome. And yes, he’s already working on it.
“We get quite a few suggestions for enhancements so the first one that came out was: “Chrome to Phone is great when can i have Phone To Chrome. So this is the reverse case, you’re on your phone, you see an interesting article, and you want to take it to your desktop,” Burke says. High on his to-do list is also a feature that will let you access the history of your actions, so you can quickly pull up an old link or map on your phone.
There has also been chatter on the web, as to whether Chrome To Phone could evolve into a TV remote type of device— especially given the impending launch of Google TV. For example, with a “Chrome to TV” extension, you could pull up a video on your laptop’s/iPad’s browser and then push it to your Google TV, essentially turning your computing device into a very large remote. After our video interview, I asked Burke about the concept, he said Google isn’t working on it yet but it does make a lot of sense.
See above for our full interview with Burke above. Below is a 2-minute demo video.