Google is rather interesting in that they typically seem to have very minimalist designs on their products and services, but then they’ll whip out the themes from people in the high end fashion world that couldn’t be any more the opposite. They’ve been doing it for a while with iGoogle (their personalized homepage), and today they’re doing it again with Google Chrome.
To be honest, most of these themes are a little too garish or a bit tacky, just like the first round of themes. But then again, I don’t think I’m exactly in the demographic for themes from Dolce & Gabbana, Kate Spade, and Oscar de la Renta. I’m also looking at them on the latest Chromium build for Mac where they are not exactly ready for the runway, as it were. The tab section with all of these new themes is basically impossible to read on the Mac version, which is forgivable since the Mac version is not officially here yet (which itself is less forgivable).
Chrome Themes are basically Google’s answer to Mozilla Labs’ Personas for the Firefox browser. But Mozilla has hundreds of these themes for Firefox, while Google only has a few dozen right now (though there are an impressive amount of Artists Themes). You can also create your own Persona, which you can’t currently do with Chrome Themes.
All that said, Personas does not currently have the all-important Dolce & Gabbana theme. I really, really wish I could embed this video below, but it’s disabled. Still, I think you should click on it because it perfectly captures the essence of these themes.
