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Google Announces Chrome Web Browser
by , 8:05 AM EDT, September 2nd, 2008
Internet search company Google introduced a public beta of its own WebKit-based Web browser, dubbed Google Chrome, on Monday. The announcement marks Google's entrance into the Web browser market, but the open source application is Windows-only for now with Mac OS X and Linux versions on the way.
Google's plan was to design a new Web browser from the ground up based on technologies on WebKit, just like Apple's Safari Web browser, and Mozilla's Firefox. The result is a browser that Google claims offers a more streamlined user experience for people that spend most of their working time in a Web browser.
Google Chrome will also sport performance enhancements compared to other browsers, including sandboxing for individual browser tabs so that if one tab crashes the rest of the tabs and the Web browser will continue to run. The browser will also include what Google called a "more powerful" JavaScript engine, V8.
The introduction of Google's Web browser could spell even more trouble for Microsoft's Internet Explorer. The Microsoft Web browser has been losing market share to Firefox and Safari for well over a year, and Google Chrome could eat into Internet Explorer's eroding dominance even more.
To help explain Google Chrome and to illustrate some of the technologies behind the Web browser, Google has also released its own Web-based comic book.
Google Chrome is free, and the public beta should be available for download some time on Tuesday in a Windows-compatible format. A Mac OS X version is in the works, but Google hasn't said when it will be released.
Observer Comments
I was very dubious of this. After all, the browser wars are over. What else could you do in the browser world?
Then I went out and read through the comic book. I was very pleasantly surprised. They have some very good innovations, like each tab being its own process. I am actually quite impressed. Plus, with them Open Sourcing Chrome I can see this taking off.
Iwould love to see Apple using this core as the basis of a future generation of Safari, if it ends up being as good as advertised that is.
Frankly, for me it sucks...I used gmail mostly, browsing is a minor thing in my life; I get all my work via email, and Googles new set up makes that so difficult, actually not even a reply button ... and switching back to the "old" version is unsteady, to say the least; so I downloaded Firefox, and they import all my gmail in the "old" version without any problems at all.
pictures and video on www.webxact.co.uk
As a developer of web sites, I am not best pleased by the entry of another web browser into the market place. There is already too much time and money spent on making web sites work well with the current set of browsers, adding another to the mix will only increase the cost. If Google wants to do something useful, they should focus on pushing the existing browser companies to standardize.
Tue Sep 02, 2008 12:04 pm Subject:
Quotegeoduck wrote:
I was very dubious of this. After all, the browser wars are over. What else could you do in the browser world?
Then I went out and read through the comic book. I was very pleasantly surprised. They have some very good innovations, like each tab being its own process. I am actually quite impressed. Plus, with them Open Sourcing Chrome I can see this taking off.
Iwould love to see Apple using this core as the basis of a future generation of Safari, if it ends up being as good as advertised that is.
Isn't Webkit already the core of Safari, at least for iPhones?
I think this browser is still beta, and not yet launched. I think the next safari will be much faster even than FF. But i'd wait a bit to fully rely on Google Chrome, it's fairly new. Beside i have my firefox with all the plug-ins and add ons i need right now.
But still interesting to have another option.
QuoteGuest wrote:
As a developer of web sites, I am not best pleased by the entry of another web browser into the market place. There is already too much time and money spent on making web sites work well with the current set of browsers, adding another to the mix will only increase the cost. If Google wants to do something useful, they should focus on pushing the existing browser companies to standardize.
That's exactly what they're doing by basing Chrome on WebKit--the new standard and fully standards compliant.
and thats exactly why this entire browser is Open Source - to build a standard basis for browsers to work with
QuoteGuest wrote:QuoteGuest wrote:
As a developer of web sites, I am not best pleased by the entry of another web browser into the market place. There is already too much time and money spent on making web sites work well with the current set of browsers, adding another to the mix will only increase the cost. If Google wants to do something useful, they should focus on pushing the existing browser companies to standardize.
That's exactly what they're doing by basing Chrome on WebKit--the new standard and fully standards compliant.
found download link for
google chrome browser here http://www.omegasigmaphi.com/links.htm
Tue Sep 02, 2008 4:51 pm Subject:
Or, rather than giving somebody ad revenue for hits on their site, just go to
http://gears.google.com/chrome/?hl=en
Works with a Windows browser, or with the user agent on a Mac browser set to a Windows browser agent.
Google could turn the browser into the platform, optimizing it for their own Apps-as-Services, much the same as Microsoft made IE pivotal in Windows (to their disadvantage, IMHO). Of course the difference would be that Google is accomplishing something people might want to use, Microsoft only makes people miserable.
Google has had a great rat-laboratory load-testing extravaganza for their new suite of web apps, as they design their Android phone OS. It's possible that the Android OS will make the jump from phones to PC's. It's not hard to imagine the OS running on those little green OLPC's. Barebones Linux kernel with an X-Windows interface doctored up to resemble the phone. Keep document file formats the same and there you have it.
Google may be learning from both Apple and Microsoft, from good lessons and bad. Google better be get patents, Microsoft will put them out of business over the page-up page-down thing.
Sun Sep 07, 2008 7:04 pm Subject: Google Chrome VS Safari, Firefox and IE for Mackintosh
Well, I admit I do have a PC, but I have mac laptop. I have downloaded google chrome on my PC, and it seems to have a web browser different from safari, firefox and IE (Personally I LOVE IE.), like it has a different color and it has new graphics and google search engines. I cant wait to test out chrome. On my PC it just as well as Internet explorer, safari and fireofox, but for some reason chrome made Internet Explorer load faster...
Thanks
"Iwould love to see Apple using this core as the basis of a future generation of Safari, if it ends up being as good as advertised that is."
Both Safari and Google Chrome use WebKit as their rendering engine. HTML pages should be nearly identical on both, depending on which version they pin down on.
They use different JavaScript engines, however. So JavaScript-heavy pages will perform differently.
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