Google Chrome released – the resumption of the Browser Wars?

In the red corner, weighing 130 kilograms, standing 195 cm tall, the world champeen since 1999, the big bustling browser from Redmond in the state of Washington – MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER! And in the blue corner, new to the game, stats unknown but with form in the sweet science of tech, the cunning, crafty comer from Mountain View, California, GOOGLE CHROME! And also donning the shiny pants ready to jump in and get in a punch or two is Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Flock. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Browser Wars 2.0. Let’s get ready to RUMBLE!

Google Chome beta launched

Google Inc. today launched Google Chrome, a new open source browser intended to create a better web experience for users around the world. Available in beta in more than 40 languages, Google Chrome is a new approach to the browser that’s based on the simplicity and power that users have come to expect from Google products.

In the early days of the internet, web pages were frequently little more than text. But today the web has evolved into a powerful platform that enables users to collaborate with friends and colleagues through email and other web applications, edit documents, watch videos, listen to music, manage finances and much more. Google Chrome was built for today’s web and for the applications of tomorrow.

“We think of the browser as the window to the web – it’s a tool for users to interact with the websites and applications they care about, and it’s important that we don’t get in the way of that experience,” said Sundar Pichai, Vice President of Product Management, Google Inc. “Just like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome has a simple user interface with a sophisticated core to enable the modern web.”

Improving the web experience

Google Chrome was designed to make it easy for users to search and navigate the web for the content they’re looking for.

A combined search and address bar quickly takes users where they want to go, often in just a few keystrokes.
When users open a new tab in Google Chrome, they’ll see a page that includes snapshots of their most-visited sites, recent searches and bookmarks, making it even easier to navigate the web.

Google Chrome was engineered to deliver a seamless web experience for users. At its core is a multi-process platform that helps provide users with enhanced stability and security.

Each browser tab operates as a separate process; by isolating tabs, should one tab crash or misbehave, others remain stable and responsive, and users can continue working without having to restart Google Chrome.

Google also built a new JavaScript engine, V8, that not only speeds up today’s web applications, but enables a whole new class of web applications that couldn’t exist on today’s browsers.

Open source

“While we see this as a fundamental shift in the way people think about browsers, we realise that we couldn’t have created Google Chrome on our own,” said Linus Upson, Director of Engineering, Google Inc. “Google Chrome was built upon other open source projects that are making significant contributions to browser technology and have helped to spur competition and innovation.”

To further advance the openness of the web, Google Chrome is being released as an open source project. The intent is that Google will help make future browsers better by contributing the underlying technology in Google Chrome to the market, while continuing to develop additional features.

Where to get Google Chrome

How to get Google ChromeGoogle Chrome is being released in beta for Windows and can be downloaded here (link opens in a new window). Google Chrome for Mac and Linux users will be available in the coming months. For more information on the open source project, visit the Chromium site (link opens in new window).

It’s a beta!

Google would not have released Chrome without significant testing, but keep in mind this is a beta program, it is to some extent unfinished, and untested on many corners of the web. Google recognise this, and hope that users who download the program contact them with any difficulties or oddness they encounter using Chrome.

Timed as it is just prior to Microsoft releasing version 8 of its Internet Explorer browser, this is a major shot across the bow by Google. Interesting times. Microsoft are trying to become an internet player, made transparent by their attempt to buy Yahoo!, and here we have Google, on top of their cloud computing Office-like apps, their Wikipedia-like Knol, spreading out with increasing strength from its incredibly strong fortress of search.

Of course the addition of a browser to Google’s offerings is a smart guard of their search advertising base, limiting the effectiveness of any attempt by Microsoft to muscle in on Google’s main revenue stream.

They know that nothing in this space can stand still. Today’s Google could be tomorrow’s Lotus 123.

Source: Google and GadgetGuy staff