Google announced a new app and Chrome browser extension this morning called Chrome to Phone. It’s a great-looking little system that lets you click one button in your browser and send links, maps, currently selected text, YouTube videos and phone numbers to your Android device running Android 2.2 or later.
Why doesn’t every phone in the world offer this? That would sure make sense to me. Dear extension developers, would someone please build this for the iPhone? I’d also love to see Instapaper integration into a service like this, even the equivalent for multimedia like videos. Imagine one click on the desktop browser sending a downloaded video to your phone. That would be cool, but the feature as it’s launched today is pretty cool already.
There’s something about this feature that feels both futuristic and obvious, at the same time. When the company behind Google Voice was first acquired, one of the big selling points was that you could switch from your home phone to your cell phone or other lines seamlessly. Not having had a land-line for years, that never really excited me. Switching from my laptop to my phone, though – that makes sense for the way I travel around town.