Chrome, the Browser From Google

Look at this logo, it will soon be omnipresent. Google launches Tuesday, September 2, 2008 the beta version of its own browser software different from those we knew so far as we will see. Chrome is open source as Firefox and will works on all systems.

Strategy

Google supports the Mozilla Foundation and has provided funding until 2011. However, despite his great success and its market share steadily growing, the browser does not seem capable of effectively oppose to Internet Explorer.
But the latter version 8 is a threat to the interests of Google and for the multitude of Web sites that offer free services because they are financed through advertising. Internet Explorer 8 contains an option that would remove the ability for a remote site to measure advertising displays and thus make their business impossible.

By creating its own browser, Google could both promote the development of Web applications - and we see already that Chrome has features for this - and also maintain funding in the form of Web advertising.

A better browser

Chrome will be:
- Faster.
- More secure.
- Easier to use.
- More complete.
and propose features to replace the operating system with its local applications by the browser with Web applications.

Features and News

Chrome differs from other browsers, not only in the interface as seen in this section but, as discussed in the section "technologies" in its internal functioning too.

Multi-process

The tabs are above the URL bar and not the reverse, because the URL and the entire session are part of the tab and the browser allows multiple processes to have browsing environments without interfering one with another. When connected to a site, you can be on another without being connected to the two in the same environment that would be a source of insecurity.
Each tab has its memory and when it is closed, everything that is concerned, session cookies and other disappear as if the browser had been closed.

Private browsing

Being able to navigate without a trace, without cookies, cache, this feature will be integrated into Internet Explorer 8 under the name InPrivate by Microsoft in the way we has said, and it will be in Chrome in a more classic way and named Incognito.

Web application

It is a modus operandi already offered by Prism, displaying only the useful portion of the page in full screen and not the navigation part.

Omnibox

The address bar is meant to be intelligent, it offers a completion which suggests to Net surfers what remains to type. It is both a search bar and a URL bar, that takes into account the habit of surfers who type directly the name of a site in the search bar rather than the complete URL in the URL bar...

Slideshow of sites

As on the screenshot on the right, the start page presents a slide show of sites previously consulted, an idea which comes from the Opera browser.

Technologies

Chrome incorporates the following technologies:

Webkit

Originally designed for Konqueror, the KDE browser for Linux, Webkit was adopted by Apple for its Safari browser and improved. This is the more compact and more efficient renderer. It was chosen for Chrome.

JavaScript V8

V8 is the name of a virtual machine for JavaScript compiled at runtime as is Java, as TraceMonkey in Firefox 3.1, making scripts much faster and efficient than with the traditional JavaScript interpreter. This tool has been designed by a team of programmers in Denmark.

Skia

The Skia graphics library of Chrome is equivalent to Cairo for Firefox. It is already used by Android but become open source under the Apache 2 license. It allows to display animations and can use OpenGL for textures.

Gears

Gears can be integrated on other browsers, it will be supplied by default with Chrome and will allow to run Web applications offline.
The command "about: plugins" (this also works with Firefox) displays the version of Gears and all modules added.

HTML 5

Some parts of HTML 5 are already implemented in Webkit, including Canvas, the graphics rendering surface. You can use Canvas with Firefox, Chrome and Safari.

Performances

The command "about: memory" shows the usage of memory for Chrome as well as for other running browsers. Chrome seems less economical than Opera, but more than Firefox. The values for Internet Explorer are biased because it uses components of the operating system not taken into account.
Other useful commands: about:dns, about:cache...

The software is loaded extremely quickly, even more than Internet Explorer, whose components are resident in memory, and this is the big advantage over Firefox.

Reactions

At Mozilla, the arrival of Chrome is welcomed although it takes it already a market share.
The programmers of Webkit are actively working to integrate V8 and Skia to make it available on other browsers, Safari for all systems, Konqueror and Epiphany for Linux.

Reaction of Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft:

"If you talk to Google they’ll say it's thin client computing but then they’ll issue a new browser that’s basically a big fat operating system designed to compete with Windows but running on top of it." Reference The register.

Conclusion

The browser is the operating system of tomorrow. Actually some computers have already a way of starting a snapshot that displays a browser to access the Net without waiting for the tedious loading of Vista or Linux.
So Google with its browser becomes an alternative to Microsoft and Windows.

References

• The Chrome cartoon. Offered by Google to discover the new browser.
• Official Announcement on Google's blog.
• Download Chrome.
• Chrome FAQ. This is a general FAQ. There is a FAQ about using Chrome on the Google's site.
• Webkit.

Notes

Unlike other software, Chrome is not installed into the "Programs" directory but into "Users/account-name/AppData/Local/Google".