Google goes Chrome
Most people have heard by now, that Google has released a beta version of their very own browser, which they have proudly dubbed: Chrome.
Similar to their web site, Google is using a minimalistic approach regarding the appearance of its UI. They claim that it makes the web "faster, safer, and easier". It uses a totally new JavaScript engine they named V8, and each tab operates as a separate system process to prevent any memory leaks or crash of the browser as a whole. Chrome uses components from Apple's Webkit and Mozilla Firefox.
Now, I must admit, for the past several years I have been loyal to Firefox, while flaming any and all versions of IE, but now, I don't know... after trying out this beta for just few minutes; I might have just found a new best friend!
At first I thought that their idea of having a comic book to explain how Chrome works and what all of its features were was cheap, but then after reading several pages of it I found that I was fascinated by the comics contents. It was quite informative, and I actually read more than I would have if it was just a boring manual.
Since the browser is still only a beta version at this point we can all expect to find a few "unconventional" things and be forgiving of bugs and glitches as they come up. Surely a lot of things will be addressed as later versions of this browser are released. 
It will be interesting to see now how Google interacts with the web development community. The things I'm wondering are:
- Will they follow the cries for web standards from among the developers and be quick to squash browser quirks?
- Will they truly bring innovation to the web (which Microsoft has failed to do)?
- Or will they simply fall behind in the browser wars, and silently die off like the IE5 Mac browser did?
We shall see.
Sep 03, 2008
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