Age. Distance. Loss. Education. Innovation. They all have the power to force a new perspective, evoke nostalgia, or sadness, or self-reflection, or delight. This project brought together two wildly different creations, a song and an internet browser, that were asking the same question: When you look at something familiar through a new lens, what do you feel?Our idea was an interactive music video for Arcade Fire that took the familiar language of Google Maps and Streetview and the power of Google Chrome but wove them into a narrative only the Web could write, lending the technology stunning emotional resonance and augmenting the song with a personalized, groundbreaking visual experience: Users got a music video set on the streets where they grew up, a tool to send an imagined message to their younger self, and the opportunity to share that message with strangers.This wasn’t a project about money - either spending it or making it (there was no financial goal). It was about changing the perspective of the average internet user. Most people didn’t understand or care that browsers contribute to their Web experience. With its browser Google Chrome, Google wants to move the web forward and showcase the power of the latest Web technologies. From a marketing standpoint, Google always tries to connect the magic of technology to its users.

So the objective was really to generate awareness and press on how developers can push the boundaries of web experiences, made possible only by HTML5 technologies and modern browsers like Chrome. Building this project on the web and for the browser allowed us to craft an experience that is personalized and deeply personal, breaking out of the one-to-many paradigm of a traditional music video.

So far the site has had 10,000,000 visits and the visits. People stay on the site for an average of 5m 43s. To date, over 500,000 of them have been sufficiently moved by the experience to send a virtual postcard to their younger self. And the tidal wave of buzz surged from tech opinion-leaders to celebs to fans to the media, generating countless tweets, shares and online conversations, and a groundswell of educational, celebratory media coverage. Not just on Wired and Buzzfeed, but on NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Art Forum, and the BBC. The world was talking - for the first time - about how a browser made them feel.