Google Enters the Battle of the Browsers

In what could have quite easily been yet another of Google’s great April fool’s jokes, with the witty comic and the farfetched idea that Google would develop a web browser; Google announced the public BETA release of their new web browser. Chrome (named similarly to Mozilla’s default theme for Firefox called...er... Chrome) is promised to be the next generation in web browsers, packing all the good bits from the current leading browsers into the clean simplicity that has become synonymous with Google.





But why did the search giant do it?

Google, normally noted for its search systems and PPC advertising, is not who you would expect to release a new web browser. But it would appear that Google has been moving more and more into desktop development over the past few years. Take the Android team for example; they’ve been quietly beavering away developing a full software stack for mobile phones including their own operating system.

According to Google, this new browser takes away the unnecessary paraphernalia of the standard browser and instead concentrates on delivering the website to the user in the fastest possible manner. They’ve taken parts from Firefox, and made good use of today’s multi process capabilities, to produce a browser that is not only extremely fast but secure and reliable too.

Google demonstrated their ideas and the browser's capabilities using the medium of art. They commissioned Scott McCloud to produce a comic based on the words and ideas of the Chrome development team. The comic, that can be seen here, was released 2 days before the launch of the BETA and was in fact the only information available about the browser, other than vague blog posts, but at 6PM GMT www.google.com/chrome stopped displaying 404 error pages and chrome was available for download.





Google have really made good use of multi process browsing and developed Chrome in such a way that they make maximum use of this. Each new tab is a separate process meaning that you never lose control of the browser even if one tab crashes. JavaScript has been moved out of the browser and is now a separate virtual machine that runs separately for each tab. According to Google this is one of their biggest improvements over current browsers in that a JavaScript that needs to be processed can be without the user losing control of the browser as is often the case with MSIE and Firefox.

Google have taken the idea of user contribution much like Firefox. The browser is built on an open source rendering engine, and integrates a lot of the Google services like Google Gears, enabling users to create their own applications directly in the browser.

Designed with the future of websites in mind, Chrome might just pull off all that Google has promised, especially with the contributions of the open source community that has made Mozilla Firefox so powerful and popular.





Certainly Chrome’s stark white features and lack of menu buttons will put some users off, but the power and simplicity of the browser will ensure its use in the development community.

But is Chrome the final nail in the Microsoft Internet Explorer coffin or just another stop on Google’s world domination tour?

Only compatible with Microsoft Windows, Chrome doesn’t quite have the firepower to compete with the major players in the browsers business, and this early release stage, although feature rich, is not as packed with useful functionality as the current leaders.

The best way to find out about Google’s new browser is to head on over to the Google website and download yourself a copy. You can download the Chrome BETA from the Google website.

Harry