Google Enters The Browser Market With Google Chrome

Martin Brinkmann
Sep 1, 2008
Updated • Mar 16, 2015
Google
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Rumors have been filling forums, blogs and websites that Google was working on a browser to compete with Microsoft on yet another level. Those rumors never ceased completely in the last three years or so and today those rumors seem to have gone over into a semi-official announcement of Google Chrome.

Google sent out a 38-paged comic book illustrated by Scott McCloud to selected individuals which is entitled Google Chrome - Behind the Open Source browser project. The complete comic is available on the Google Blogoscoped website. The comic is showing real Google employees and their thoughts and ideas as well as functions of the browser project.

It begins by outlining the basic concepts of a browser as Google sees it. A browser should be stable, a lot faster, more secure, clean, simple, efficient and Open Source. Google Chrome will make use of multiple processes which means that each tab is rendered separately which includes JavaScript. This means that if one process in one tab crashes because of a bug then only this tab will go down but the rest of the browser will remain stable. Microsoft introduced that feature in Internet Explorer 8 as well.

One of the most interesting features of Google Chrome is a task manager like application for the browser that displays the memory usage of each tab and detailed information for each tab as well which makes it easy to identify the resource that is using up most of the memory.

A V8 Javascript engine was created for Google Chrome which promises a performance boost over current JavaScript engines while being memory efficient using better garbage collection. The address bar is called Omnibox in Google Chrome and each tab will use its Omnibox which can do anything the Firefox Awesome Bar can do. It will support intelligent unobtrusive autocomplete and capture search boxes from Internet sites locally if they are used.

Speaking about creating a new tab. Just yesterday I mentioned a Firefox extension that would open an individual website instead of a blank page. Google Chrome makes use of the same concept by displaying the nine most visited websites plus searches on those pages.

Google Chrome will make use of a privacy function just like Microsoft's InPrivat feature in Internet Explorer 8 and sandboxing is introduced to protect the system.

There is so much on this 38 pages. It is obvious that the Google Chrome development team took a look at Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera borrowing any good ideas that those browser came up with and added their ideas to the mix. This could be a huge thing.

The browser will be available at google.com/chrome which currently displays a 404 error.

Summary
Google Enters The Browser Market With Google Chrome
Article Name
Google Enters The Browser Market With Google Chrome
Description
Google announced Google Chrome, a web browser that it plans to launch in the near future by highlighting its core features using a comic strip.
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Comments

  1. Shirley said on September 3, 2008 at 2:27 pm
    Reply

    Yeh, this browser is amazing. I have officially switched from Firefox. I love the innate web development features… No need for Firebug!

    I just praised it on my blog:
    http://www.velvetblues.com/web-development-blog/google-chrome-is-a-developers-dream-realized/

  2. rruben said on September 2, 2008 at 10:38 pm
    Reply

    I just installed it and am positively surprised, even impressed. Its memory usage is even lower dan Adobe reader 8.1. It has imported all my bookmarks and passwords from firefox without any problems. It looks clean, is fast and because of all of the above points 100% perfect for noobs. With other words the browser war can finally begin!

    -Noobs want something faster.
    -Noobs want something they can trust; and they trust Google because its their homepage. For many, Firefox is new so not trustworthy enough.

    In google.nl I can already see a text under the search box, translated;
    New! Download Chrome (beta) – The new browser of Google

    So Chrome gets the attention where the Firefox foundation can only dream of.

    ..But Firefox is still better for web developers and advanced users wo can’t live without the firefox add ins. But like I said before Google is diving into the noob market which is everyone except us techie people at ghacks and some other tech sites.

    Anyway I will start experimenting with Chrome and see what I like best in the future.

  3. darkkosmos said on September 2, 2008 at 10:22 pm
    Reply

    Tried it and have to say I’m seriously disappointed. It uses far less memory than any other browser and works well for basic stuff but it’s like an improved IE! :( I would like the features but not enough to switch, would be happy though if someone muxed the chrome code with firefox since both are open source.

  4. rruben said on September 2, 2008 at 6:12 pm
    Reply

    Yes I heard about it and I think that Google will dive into the noob market to get some of IE’s marketshare. Anyway because it is open source other browsers will benefit from the innovation Google implement in Chrome.

    I am curious whether this will break the IE6 marketshare by persuading IE6 users to step up to a newer browser and because it is from google these noobs will trust it anyway.

  5. Farhan said on September 2, 2008 at 10:22 am
    Reply

    Its very interesting that Google has decided to take on a project like this. They obviously have such an interest in how people access the web, it was only a matter of time before they took things into their own hands. It is going to be very interesting to see how this pans out.

    Google Chrome browser Screenshots
    http://www.tonesall.com/computers-internet/google-chrome-screenshots.html

  6. darkkosmos said on September 2, 2008 at 12:16 am
    Reply

    o.0 it’s released tomorrow and that’s for using linux :P

  7. Dotan Cohen said on September 1, 2008 at 11:30 pm
    Reply

    It’s only available as an RPM package (not even source is available yet) so I had to convert it to .deb with alien. It installed fine, but it really seems like Firefox with a screwed up theme. I can’t get the tab bar back where it belongs, and regular Firefox extensions won’t install. The keyboard shortcuts only work on the Latin keyboard layout, and it seems to render pages really slow, like see-the-letters-appear-on-screen slow. At least it’s not crashing!

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