Google Introduces Browser Called Chrome

[Nathan]

Originally Posted by Information Week

Google's new browser, named Chrome, seems to have taken off a bit earlier than Google anticipated. As far as I know, it's also the first browser launched by a comic book announcement. It's actually a very effective and entertaining way to explain the goals, features, and architecture of Google Chrome.

Google Chrome's debut answers a 16-month mystery: Why did Google buy GreenBorder Technologies? I looked at GreenBorder in 2006 and thought it was a great product. Essentially, GreenBorder used some virtual machine technology to isolate programs from the operating system, but still allowed them to talk with the OS in a controlled way. The most useful job for GreenBorder was to "sandbox" a copy of Internet Explorer or Firefox to make browsing more secure.

If you look at a list of Google acquisitions, the one that stuck out until today was GreenBorder, which was listed as "internal use" rather than being associated with a product or service. When Google picked up GreenBorder in May 2007, it was rather curious. Experts and analysts had some wild guesses about how GreenBorder might be used inside Google.

Few people seemed to foresee that Google would ship the technology inside a full-blown browser competitor to Internet Explorer and Firefox. Yet GreenBorder employees are definitely in the thick of Chrome's sandboxing work; the comic book's section on sandboxing names several former GreenBorder staff such as Mark Larson and Carlos Pizano.

The timing of Google Chrome's announcement is interesting because it comes just after IE8 has gone public with its feature set. Did Google pick this time to debut Chrome because it feels it already beats IE8? For example, IE8's InPrivate Browsing is functionally similar to Chrome's sandboxing, but doesn't appear to go nearly as deep architecturally. People won't be able to answer those questions until they can spend some time with Chrome.

....

Dave Methvin

Awesome "Behind the Scenes" Comic: http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

Homepage / Download: http://www.google.com/chrome

[artdutra04]

I really like all of the new amazing features "under the hood" of Chrome, in regards to how Chrome treats tabs, processes, memory management and the new JavaScript engine, as well as being multi-threaded and being sandboxed. The internal "Task Manager" to see which tabs are using up all your resources is pretty cool as well.

But for right now, Chrome is lacking a few too many features to make it a serious, full-time browser for the average user. (Although right now it would make an awesome mobile browser). But hopefully with time, both Chrome and all other browsers will improve. (I cannot wait for some of the new technical features of Chrome to make their way into Firefox).

I've already installed it on my Vista partition, hopefully the OSX version isn't too far behind.

[Joe Matt]

Originally Posted by artdutra04

I've already installed it on my Vista partition, hopefully the OSX version isn't too far behind.

Unfortunatly it is.

http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2008/0...riorities.html

Right now, both are in the “pieces build and pass tests, but there’s no Chromium application yet.” While we’re working hard and fast on catching up to the Windows version, we’re not setting an artificial date for when they’ll be ready—we simply can’t predict enough to make a solid estimate, and we expect to learn a lot from the Windows public beta as well.

I love this browser and it made me boot up my XP machine for the first time in months!

[Pat Fairbank]

Chrome is awesome; I've been waiting impatiently to be able to use it for months (only ever seen it demoed before now) and it definitely exceeds my expectations. I've found it to be ridiculously fast with Javascript-intensive web apps like Gmail and Calendar. The only thing that's missing as far as I'm concerned is support for mouse gestures.

I'm sure Google won't be too far behind on releasing versions for Mac and Linux; the engineers there mostly have Linux workstations and many additionally have Macbook laptops, and I'm sure they're clamoring to be able to use Chrome.

[ComradeNikolai]

On first use, Chrome seems to be awesome. I am also in love with Google, so this is awesome for me to be able to integrate them into every facet of my daily life. I haven't encountered any glitches yet, but I won't be surprised if I do since it's still a beta.

I hope the Linux release is soon...

[MrForbes]

It's fast! but it also doesn't have flashblock or noscript extensions, so I can't use it (I'm allergic to advertising).

[Kyle Love]

Meh, I'm sticking with Firefox for now.

[Protronie]

Very interesting... think I'll try it. Will let you know how it goes.

Thanks for the heads-up.

[Elgin Clock]

I'm a Google fan-boy for pretty much everything they release, but Chrome seems to be lacking a lot of major things I look for in a browser.

Customization to view videos & what program handles what file types to be more specific.
Also, I was on a you-tube type embedded video site, & the fullscreen video mode wasn't able to be controlled. - The buttons just didn't work at all while in full-screen mode.
Also, some (non-QT extension) videos all default to Quicktime, no matter how many times I reset them in both Quicktime & WMP to not play in QT.
Very annoying.
The options in Chrome seem to be missing some tabs as well.
I want to think at some times while using this that they spent more time on the comic than they did on making the browser.

It's ok overall, & I like the history box that pops up when opening a new tab, but for now FireFox & IE still have an advantage.

It will be nice to see this one grow. It's a great start, but far from complete.

[klrswift]

Chrome definitely has great potential. I'd like to see a feature similar to the Master Password that firefox has. The saved passwords import doesnt seem to have worked to well for me, either. For the first release, I'd say its doing pretty well, though.

[NickE]

I downloaded Chrome on Tuesday when it was released, and I was very pleased.

Chrome seems to be much speedier than Firefox 3. It also appears to be much less prone to crashing. When an individual tab crashes, the whole browser does not crash. This is great, and makes the browser as a whole much more stable.

I like how when it saves passwords, it will not show the passwords on demand (like firefox). However, it does not recognize password fields on all sites, and does not ask to save the password (like chiefdelphi.com)

The start page that comes default with Chrome is excellent! It does a great job of predicting the websites that you want, and placing them in the thumbnail view. It also shows your commonly used bookmarks and allows you to search your history directly from the page.

The ability to search from within the address bar is well-done. You can type "a" <tab> and then type to search amazon, or "w" for wikipedia. It also briefly searches your history.

I have not noticed any major issues, and I will probably use it for the majority of my web browsing from now on. The only thing that is keeping me from using Chrome full time is the fact that several of my firefox add-ons do not work with it.

[bkwrm92]

Originally Posted by Kyle Love

Meh, I'm sticking with Firefox for now.

I Agree. I put way to much effort customizing my apps and stuff in FF and it would be a huge waste to have to start over with a new browser that still has some bugs to work out. Chrome is a nice first step in a (somewhat) new direction for browsers, but I think I'm going to wait for the actual release.

Anyways, I still have my fingers crossed for Google OS.