Web & Technologies

Meet the fastest internet browser – Google Chrome!

SergiuSeptember 7, 2008

It seems that every blogger around the globe feels necessary to announce the release of Google’s latest product – Google Chrome web browser! And if you haven’t heard about it yet, that can mean only one thing – you’ve been away from the virtual world for at least 5 days. The beta version for Windows (XP and Vista) was announced and released on September 2, 2008 and Mac OS X and Linux versions are still under development.

Google claims the new Chrome browser is far faster and more reliable than anything else today. It runs on the new V8 JavaScript engine and is based on WebKit. I can tell you myself from my own experience that it does feel faster and it is also already confirmed by numerous tests and benchmarks. Security was one of the main concerns and the architecture for the browser was built from the scratch.

The main question raised is why did Google decided to enter the market of web browsers? For some it was an obvious move, but let’s see what really happened. Mozilla Firefox was sponsored by Google since 2006 (85% of it’s income) and it will still be sponsored in the future (till 2011), so why creating a new product that will compete with the one you’re sponsoring? Well, the answer is quite simple, Mozilla officials declared earlier that Firefox cannot become an arm of Google although sponsored mainly by them, and Google cannot rival Microsoft while they retain the biggest share of the market with Internet Explorer, so they just had to develop their own product. Some analysts say Google Chrome has got a big future and chances are in about a year it will become more popular then Firefox (which holds over 19% of the market share). I seriously doubt that, but let’s see what happens. The good and definite thing is there will be less Internet Explorer users out there as that’s probably where the big switch will occur. So the crash of Internet Explorer‘s dominance will be happening sooner then expected.

The big players on the web browser market today for Windows are: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Safari. Few other smaller player’s importance is insignificant. And now we have Google Chrome! That should spice up the things a little bit. I personally use Firefox 3 and have no intense of changing it to anything, but occasionally I ramble the web with other browsers. I just love the feel and look of Safari (even the way the browser displays fonts and sizes is different) and because of some retarded web-masters that design things just for Internet Explorer I have to use that archaic browser from time to time. Also I check on my own web creations in Explorer to make sure the less lucky users that haven’t heard of Firefox or don’t know how to change to other more advanced and better browsers will be able to see my stuff properly.

But, let’s get back to Google’s Chrome! To help you understand better what is the Chrome Browser and what it does there was a special comic book made for you, so read this one first and come back! If you test the browser and want to find more, get the latest themes and plugins and find out tips and tricks for Chrome – join the forum at ChromeSpot.

My first impression about Chrome was: “what an ugly thing… erhh”. But fortunately you can easily change the theme and get rid of that creepy blue standard color and these ugly Vista themed buttons. Here’s where you can find some themes: FreeChromeThemes [the web-site is down!] and ChromeSpot. Strongly recommending you to visit Chromable.com – for the latest and best themes, plugins and tutorials!

Here are some nice features for Google Chrome:

• Each tab runs it’s own process, so if one crashes the rest will still be available, also contributes to increased security
• Auto-suggest function: will complete automatically URLs that were manually entered, search suggestions, previously visited pages, unvisited popular pages and text search over history
• Popup windows are scoped to the tab they came from and will not appear outside the tab unless the user explicitly drags them out
• Implemented full-text search functionality
• Chrome will warn users when they attempt to visit a harmful site
• There’s a private browsing feature called Incognito that prevents browser from storing any history information or cookies from the websites visited
• You’ll also find a process management utility called the Task Manager which allows you to monitor what sites are using the most memory, downloading the most or abusing CPU
• New tab page shows thumbnails of the nine most visited web sites along with the most searched sites, recent bookmarks and recently closed tabs.

Some interesting articles for your further reading on that interesting subject: Apple Observer considers Safari will suffer from Chrome release, increasing legal concerns over EULA at TipeTheHive, Ars Technica and Gizmodo – basically the original EULA gave Google complete control over all content submitted through the browser, but it happened to be an accidental “copy paste” which was soon changed. ZDNet gives 5 reasons why Chrome will crash and burn and 5 reasons why Chrome will take over the world.

And just for fun – type into Chrome’s address bar: “about:internets” and watch what happens. Search for more about: function calls yourself!

P.S.: Looking back in time at the browsers I used: Netscape Navigator, that was the obvious choice and Internet Explorer became better just later (don’t know the version or exactly when did it happened, but I remember the icon changed from the globe to the big “e” letter), so I did switch to Internet Explorer, then Opera came along – truly faster and better option, then I switched to some Internet Explorer’s modifications like Green Browser and Avant Browser until Mozilla Firefox became worth it and I use it to that day.

Classifications: Mozilla Firefox is for the ones that like to have control and funcionality; Safari is for designers, art people, creative nature’s, pretty girls; Opera is for geeks and nerds; Google Chrome is for dynamic people and Internet Explorer is for retards and newbies.