Google Chrome, Google's Browser Project

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-09-01-n47.html

by nickb • 18 years ago

173 108 18 years ago

mixmax• 18 years ago

So soon we'll have yet another browser to check for compatibility issues in CSS and javascript. Great.

cookiecaper3• 18 years ago

Well, assuming it uses a pristine WebKit backend, you should only have to test in one browser with the same WebKit build. :) I guess that might be idealistic thinking, but hopefully it pans out.

meat-eater• 18 years ago

They seem to be using their own javascript engine, so it might need separate testing because of that. Although if it becomes popular enough, most javascript libraries and frameworks will surely support it.

pistoriusp• 18 years ago

Also google might have more push than Mozilla to get it installed on all of those machines running IE6.

sh1mmer• 18 years ago

I don't see the need for Google to try and compete in a space where there is already plenty of competition and Open Source innovation.

Maybe they are tired of giving Mozilla Corp Ad Words money for Firefox searches.

neilk3• 18 years ago

They just renewed the contract with Mozilla. That's got nothing to do with it. And there's not nearly enough competition in browsers. Sure, there are lots of projects, but few of them are serious contenders for the average Windows user -- maybe Opera and Firefox qualify, but that's about it.

If you've ever tried to write a complex web app you immediately bang your head against the low, low ceiling afforded by the browser. Google knows this as well as anybody and it impedes adoption of Google apps like Gmail or Docs. Making the browser into a better platform is good for their business -- note they are giving away their spiffy new JS engine and the whole thing is open source.

If Firefox adopted their innovations tomorrow or one-upped them, I'm sure the Chrome team would be very happy.

wayne• 18 years ago

Plus, a little less altruistically, it lets Google embed stuff like Google Gears and Google Toolbar directly into the browser, set Google.com as the browser homepage, and add a bunch of buttons linking to various Google services. Companies like Google pay a lot for defaults like that.

Plus, like Apple, they've got a mobile platform now so maybe they'll use some subset of Chrome in Android.

Hexstream• 18 years ago

And did you see the need for Google to try and compete in the search engine space when there was already plenty of competition?

dabeeeenster• 18 years ago

Anyone got a mirror? It's crawling...

haasted• 18 years ago

The graphic presentation is accessible through http://blogoscoped.com.nyud.net/google-chrome/ .

johnyzee2• 18 years ago

That is a badass presentation. I wouldn't have read 10% of that information had it been delivered as paragraphs of text.

neilk3• 18 years ago

pdf, courtesy Brian Enigma: http://brevity.org/pic/chrome/Google_on_Google_Chrome.pdf

zip of pngs: http://brevity.org/pic/chrome/google-chrome-mccloud-comic.zi...

or, all in individual png files: http://brevity.org/pic/chrome/

byrneseyeview• 18 years ago

Page 9: this is exactly what Bram Cohen was asking for (http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/51080.html).

cookiecaper3• 18 years ago

This is cool and all, but did they have to choose "Chrome" for the name? No reason to do that other than to cause confusion, I think.

jeffgreco• 18 years ago

Strikes me as a very catchy name for the typical user, who most likely doesn't have "browser chrome" in their vocabulary already. And I doubt it'll be that hard for the rest of us to keep straight.

cookiecaper3• 18 years ago

You're probably right, but there are so many other potential catchy names that aren't the same as Mozilla's interface layer, so I don't know why they couldn't have just gone with one of those and made it easier on everyone.

jdbradford• 18 years ago

Scoble has an interesting take on this - http://bit.ly/4oioQZ

"Several years ago Microsoft had a project code-named Chrome. It was supposed to be a multimedia browser. The project was killed a few weeks away from shipping."

azharcs• 18 years ago

I think Google is pretty threatened by Microsoft and Firefox, they are afraid platforms will one-up them in the future and they know it very well.

jcl• 18 years ago

It's hard to believe that Google feels threatened by Firefox when they are directly paying the lion's share of Firefox's development/operating expenses -- a deal which they just extended by three years (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrati...).

geuis2• 18 years ago

I don't like the idea of YAB, yet another browser. It's absolutely necessary that we have competition but it's way too easy to dilute the market.

It's like the problem of too much choice. We all face it. We go to the store and are greeted with 10 slightly different versions of the same product. Mint toothpaste, mint with extra-whitening, mint-flavored baking soda toothpaste. I don't want to buy one that tastes bad. This stuff is going in my mouth 3x a day, after all. So I'm confused and cranky because I just want my normal toothpaste. My brain remembers the box had the certain logo and the certain white swish of box art. Found it! What size, big or small? Done, continue on to shopping decisions I actually want to think about like what's for dinner.

These days, the choice of a browser by 90% of people is the same kind of commodity thought given to toothpaste. They know what they're familiar with. They identify it via the shape and color of the icon, and maybe whether it says "internet" or not.

We've had to take 4 years to push Firefox to ~20% marketshare. Internet Explorer still has 75% total, with 30% of that being IE6. Safari, Opera, and all other browsers squeeze into the rough remaining 5% of the market. Adding YAB to the party won't serve anything except to dilute the last 5% some more.

What we need is not new browsers, OSS or not. We need marketing. Microsoft had easy marketing for IE. An icon on the desktop called "Internet".

We need Apple-style ads with Jason Long as Firefox and John Hodgeman as Internet Explored. Boil the message down to the barest essentials of the message and make it as clear to the "other 90%" as the Big Blue E meant "internet".

alaskamiller2• 18 years ago

The browser war was based on distribution, not marketing. Now this will be a war based on money, not distribution.

Will Google continue to pay and support Mozilla Foundation? Because once that's gone...

siong1987• 18 years ago

Google just signed a 3 years deal with Mozilla. So, personally, I don't think that Google Chrome would be direct competitor to Firefox. They are in fact in two different market - normal browsing VS web application.

Refer: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrati...

http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/08/26/firefox-summit-ref...

geuis2• 18 years ago

Distribution was the marketing. The big blue e was all the marketing/branding they needed. Most users associate the Internet with that damn icon.

netcan6• 18 years ago

That is an interesting question. (An is it evil question ).

I guess it comes down to what they are trying to achieve with the browser in the first place. Is it improving the web experience or creating a dominant browser?

I think it's likely that the latter will creep in once they're at it for a few years. But for now the first seems to be a pretty important goal. For now, Firefox is a pretty important way to further that goal. And for now, Google seems happy enough to sink some cash into that goal. $15m-$20m p/y is probably a reasonable sum (compare to other expenses in this area) as long as A: Firefox significantly improves the web for users & B: That is a Google goal that they're willing to pay for.

It's not charity either. What's default search worth on the open market? Probably something.

unalone2• 18 years ago

I think you underestimate Google's ability to push their goods. They've shown time and time again that they can enter a cluttered market and make a name for themselves nonetheless.

You seem to assume that the average person isn't going to want this rather than Firefox. That's patently false. I dislike Gecko: in my experience WebKit works better and faster. I dislike Mozilla: they seem to me to be manned with incompetent workers who are each brilliant at one small thing, poor with everything else.

Above all, I dislike Firefox. I think it's extremely ugly to look at. I've had more crashes with that in Windows than I've had with Safari, and Safari on Windows isn't nearly as stable as it is on OS X. Its developers focus too much on hype and not enough on reliability and ease of use. They're arrogant about it, too.

So if Google makes a web browser similar to how they made their chat client, they'll find a market. All they need is something simple, uncluttered, fast, and efficient - and that's what they're offering up here. They don't list one feature here that I don't think is essential, and they don't miss more than one or two features that I wish they had. I think that, in terms of browser design, we've just seen Google announce that there's finally a competitor to Apple's browser. And the thing is, there are a lot of people who dislike Firefox but use it for plugins. If a browser appears that's better-designed AND open, Firefox is going to get hurt.

Also, how do you think Firefox got 20%? Google. Google Google Google. And I'm certain that they can push Chrome much faster if and when they want to.

The solution isn't advertising. The solution is figuring out just how to make a browser that users will actively seek out. Firefox was like that for a while, before other browsers got tabs. Beyond that, though, it's never had anything that new users really care much about, with the slim exception of the tech market. Most Firefox users can't tell the difference between it and IE without a hacker friend pointing it out. And I think Google is aware of that.

qaexl• 18 years ago

With the feature set of WebKit + Gears + faster Javascript, as a developer, I'm much more likely to write apps against this platform. I am thinking specifically of distributing the Chrome browser with my app:

User goes to the site and already has Chrome. My site automatically detects that, and they can download my Gears app.

User goes to the site and has Firefox. My site detects that and gives them an option of the "lite" and the "full" version of my Gears app. The "full" version just happens to come with an install of the Chrome.

User goes to the site and has IE. My site detects that and gives them the download link to my app that comes with a Chrome installer.

In all three cases, I get what I want -- users use my app, and preferably running on a platform that runs fast enough. If I'm targeting "mom and pop", I doubt they'd notice that it happens to come with Chrome.

Because I can write a Gears app that doesn't have the URL links or the menu links, as far as the user is concerned, they are simply running my app. I can easily see Google pushing an "office suite", which simply consists of a gears version of Gmail, GDoc, etc.

Personally, I liked Firefox 1 and 1.5. I thought Firefox 2 was horrible, and all the IEs worse. When Firefox 3 release candidates came out, I switched to it immediately. Reading through those feature lists, as soon as Chrome is available for Linux, I'm getting a copy of it. Maybe I won't have to keep disabling Javascript by default with Chrome.

s3graham• 18 years ago

I'd guess this is probably only secondarily for PCs, and probably more likely targeted at mobile platforms.

Also, all current JS engines are doing conservative GC? Really?

william424• 18 years ago

Yes, really. I've heard from one of the Webkit JS guys(hey, cpst!) and I think it's because of all the C(++) code you have to interface with it's all conservative.

babo• 18 years ago

There are some very interesting technical points in the presentation, it's a good thing to redesign some of the core elements of such an important application as a browser. It's sometimes easier to implement something new then rewrite legacy code.

josefresco• 18 years ago

'porn mode' if adopted by the major browser makers will be a major blow to adult advertising

gojomo• 18 years ago

Please explain. Do adult ad models require long-lived cookies?

emmett• 18 years ago

This browser looks great - it has a ton of features (mostly security/stability related) that I've been wishing for.

gaborcselle• 18 years ago

I love the comic book format of this - great idea!

bootload• 18 years ago

"... I love the comic book format of this - great idea! ..."

Thank Scott McCloud.

McCloud is to the comic world what Stallman ~ http://www.scottmccloud.com/inventions/inventions.html (Creators bill of rights) and Linus is to the computing world by writing & thinking extensively how to innovate ~ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url?_encodin... and push both the art and science of comics as hard as he can. My favourites include http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-archive.html and all time favourite Monkey Town ~ http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-17/mi-17.html

yters• 18 years ago

Thank you, those are indeed excellent comics. I think this one is especially good:

http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-25/mi-25-1.html

blackswan• 18 years ago

Google already represents the internet to a lot of people as a result of it being perceived by these people as the entrance to the internet. "The portal is the network." From this perspective a Google browser is a seriously good way to lock these users in further. The multi-functional use of the address bar is also important - many people use it like this already.

krschultz• 18 years ago

I don't think this is an attack on Firefox over 50 million bucks. I think this is Google looking at the web and saying we need a faster, more stable, more rich, browser that has these 20 features to allow us to push our web apps forward. Their game is to make web apps equal to desktop apps so that they can sell advertising on them - and hammer Microsoft. This goes towards that goal. I'm looking forward to it. Firefox is in a lot of ways IE done right. This looks like a step forward in a new direction. Maybe not revolutionary, but a step forward none the less.

william424• 18 years ago

Agreed. I wouldn't be surprised if this derived from some pissed-off (at the general state of web browsers esp. wrt slowness) Google engineer.

nailer6• 18 years ago

I wonder if Google's own Firefox devs are working on this.

I also wonder why the term Chrome was used - for devs (which are a tiny bunch of people), that term refers to the UI of Mozilla based products.

Edit: answering my second question, the term chrome is a general UI term, from before Mozilla. http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/C/chrome.html

litewulf• 18 years ago

Really really fast Javascript is game changing.

Think about it. People always make fun of how our computers are thousands and millions of times faster than computers of yore and seem to do basically the same thing... except that my word processor has live spell checking, and so on and so forth. Speed is technology enabling. Being able to add features to your site that won't make it pathetically slow when it would have been previously is huge.

Screw buzzwords, infrastructure is king. You are only as good as what lies beneath you.

signa11• 18 years ago

perhaps this has more to do with recognizing mobile devices as the next big thing (tm), and providing a seamless experience on both mobile and desktops ?

johnyzee2• 18 years ago

That seems to be what they are saying.

However, Google does not have a good track record of delivering product for non-technical end users. GMail, their one succesful homegrown, mass-market, non-search product that I can think of, is a mess (haphazard user interface, no improvement for years, still beta). For such a strategic app, that is worrying.

As for their platform vision, it also seems very scattershot. They have visionary initiatives (GWT, Gears, App Engine, now Chrome) but it seems awfully disjointed with hardly any synergy between these projects.

I think it has yet to be proven that these projects can be integrated into something larger than the sum of its parts. For my money, if they can't do it with Chrome I have no confidence they can do it at all.

jotto• 18 years ago

GMail has been improved in ways other than UI changes.

They have rewritten the HTML, CSS and JS to make it more hackable for Greasemonkey - and in the process, optimized that HTML, CSS, and JS to reduce number of connections and subsequently load time.

The backend has seen massive scaling. They added POP and IMAP.

I don't know what I would change for GMail. It's a strong email client that gets the job done. I wouldn't consider it "worrying".

Raphael• 18 years ago

iGoogle is the synergy. This will become apparent early next year.

hooande• 18 years ago

Other than the faster javascript, I don't see a lot of "game changing" innovations in this browser. These seem like mostly incremental improvements and small features. If the java engine is significantly faster this could really push things forward. Otherwise this is less than world beating.

ars• 18 years ago

You missed a massive one: multithreading.

I've wanted this for ages with firefox. Each tab runs on it's own?! It's exactly what I've been wanting.

kilowatt3• 18 years ago

Have you guys SEEN the respective code bases for Mozilla and WebKit?

Really, this was inevitable. Their whole tabs-as-process thing is too, when you think about it. Just imagine the potential for a browser-as-OS-with-processes-and-everything and how much they must be salivating to get it on devices and desktops NOT running Windows. It's a hell of a trojan horse in their winning battle to make Microsoft irrelevant...

And open source? <3

tlrobinson2• 18 years ago

"Have you guys SEEN the respective code bases for Mozilla and WebKit?"

I haven't... can you elaborate?

kilowatt3• 18 years ago

Basically, WebKit is the most immediately understandable large scale C++ codebase I've ever seen. They have a strict culture of code reviews on check-in, and reverting any changesets that cause regressions. My commits have been rejected for style--I was first pissed, and eventually impressed :P

I can't speak for Mozilla's collaborative culture (and the fact that Firefox emerged from Netscape means it can't be half-bad), but just on an aesthetic level, WebKit C++ is a lot easier on the eyes than Mozilla. One thing that's interesting about WebKit is that in the last 12 months when I've been pulling upstream changesets from them, I've noticed that they're not afraid to do project-wide renames to keep the code clean. It seems like a small thing, but it's a lot more approachable to see clean C++ that uses namespaces and abstracts away platform differences in a coherent way. Mozilla is full of COM interfaces like

  #define NS_IHTML_CSS_STYLE_SHEET_IID     \
  {0xb5cc4ac0, 0xeab6, 0x11d1, {0x80, 0x31, 0x00, 0x60, 0x08, 0x15, 0x9b, 0x5a}}

  class nsIHTMLCSSStyleSheet : public nsIStyleSheet

... and so on. edit: To be fair, I'm just a lot more familiar with WebKit, so maybe someone can defend (or pick apart) Mozilla's sources better than I can. If you check out WebKit, you'll also notice that there's an impressive collection of 210MB(!) of individual layout tests.

nailer6• 18 years ago

> Their whole tabs-as-process thing is too, when you think about it.

Could you please explain this too?

I like being able to identify and kill individual tab and plugin processes.

But I don't understand why you can't garbage collect a thread like the presentation seems to say.

lacker2• 18 years ago

You can't kill a single thread safely because threads of the same process have shared memory. For example, a thread might be in the middle of some operation that's destructive if it's aborted when only half finished.

If this seems unlikely, think of adding an element to a hash table used by many threads and having to resize it, copying all the old elements to the new one. If you kill the thread in the middle of the resize (which might take a while if it's allocating a lot of memory) then all the other threads that use that hash table will get screwed up.

There's also no good way to tell which memory is being used by which thread. Often the whole point of threads is that they use shared memory; in this case the memory bloat might be _caused_ by a single thread but end up bloating a data structure that is _shared_ by all threads.

By giving each tab its own process, Chrome uses more memory to start out with - each process must have its own data structures for some things which in normal browsers are in shared memory - but hopefully in the long run it will avoid memory leaks.

jmtulloss2• 18 years ago

It's because there isn't a compacting garbage collector running. The core is C/C++, so it relies on the OS allocator to keep memory from becoming fragmented. The OS allocators are good, but they aren't that good. In a browser you're constantly allocating and freeing large amounts of memory, so you're going to end up with some holes. Its usage pattern is way different than most applications because it's used like Google finally designed it: as a window into a bunch of different processes.

pierrefar• 18 years ago

Confirmation from the Googs itself:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser...

13ren• 18 years ago

This is a competitor in the AIR / silverlight / JavaFX space

Javascript can be enormously faster: compare ActionScript 2.0 and 3.0, which are implementations of ECMAscript (which Javascript is also) in Adobe's Flash.

If Google can basically get these things right - local persistence, speed and animation tools - the Web OS that Microsoft has greatly feared will be finally upon us...

queensnake• 18 years ago

Who knows but that what's next on Google's plate is a great implementation of SVG or whatever, to be a completely open alternative to AIR and Silverlight. I think we can almost expect it.

llimllib• 18 years ago

The webkit implementation of <canvas> is excellent, which fills most of the need for SVG, especially with separate processes for tabs.

jsrn• 18 years ago

webkit already has decent SVG support: http://webkit.org/projects/svg/status.xml

bprater• 18 years ago

What's the angle for actually getting folks to use this browser? It's taken years to get mom-and-dad to using Firefox.

neilk3• 18 years ago

If I was them, I'd be looking at:

- selling it as a corporate intranet platform -- in fact, knowing Google, this is probably already in beta internally

- similarly, convincing corporations to make it the installed browser of choice, due to improved security

- selling a low-priced GooglePC, or even giving it away. Preconfigured internet with some partner, and make Chrome the default and only shell, with prominent links to Google apps.

- putting it on cell phones via Android? But it sounds like the Android team is going with WebKit and not Chrome just yet.

nailer6• 18 years ago

If I was them, I'd also advertise it on my website, you know, just in case someone visits google.com one day.

iigs• 18 years ago

This is tremendously exciting. There are tons of comments here that are insinuating that Google is doing this to screw over Mozilla somehow. I think this is bogus:

1) I know the comic was long, but they explicitly cover their agenda -- they're taking the time and money to make some hard decisions about the browser that really need to be made (or at least investigated), like separate processes per tab / embedded-object, aggressive javascript revisions and embedding features that are relevant to the new world of applications design.

2) Mozilla sending impressions to Google is still money in Google's pocket. Judging from Mozilla's $millions cut, it's handsome change, too. They have no incentive to kill this golden goose.

3) With all due respect to the (tens of?) thousands of people that have contributed to Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox, why should we even care about Mozilla/FF? When the Mozilla codebase was open sourced, it was roughly equivalent to NS6, which was a dog compared to IE (remember why even the majority of geeks was using IE5/5.5? NS4 was an ancient PoS and NS6 was glacially slow and horrendously unpolished). A lot of us only cared about NS because it ran on the open source OSes we preferred to use, and it represented an alternative to the MS-only world we saw coming our way otherwise. I don't see how Webkit isn't better than the Mozilla codebase in any metric you can throw at it.

Conspiracy theorists: Stand down. Sure, a monopolistic Google would be as bad as any other monopoly, but I don't think this is the keystone piece to the formation of the new evil empire.

netcan6• 18 years ago

I agree that the theory is bogus. But.. 1) Explicitly covering their agenda only has value if you trust them. If Steve Ballmer was telling you about how he wants to improve the web experience for everyone, would you buy it.

2)They don't lose any impressions by replacing FF. They just stop paying for them.

3) I agree. But that just means you don't care if they kill FF. Not that they're not.

shiranaihito• 18 years ago

Well, this can't be anything but good for (us) users.

It's a bit peculiar though, how both the recently published IE8 and now "Chrome" both have tabs isolated.

I hope Opera will be able to keep up with all the competition!

The inventors of Mouse Gestures & Speed Dial etc deserve quite a bit of respect.

AndyKelley• 18 years ago

http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome/22

What would you use this incognito feature for, except the obvious? Are they really creating a feature just for that one thing?

ojbyrne• 18 years ago

A lot of people use internet cafes, especially outside north america, some of which don't do the best job of wiping data after use.

rglullis• 18 years ago

Think of library computers, or the "Telecentros" in São Paulo.

Even more important. With the browser being a true OS and more and more applications living in the cloud, there is a slight chance that people would have less of a need to carry their own laptop around, and just work on someone else's. Incognito mode could be a way to make that easy and worry-free.

lacker2• 18 years ago

A lot of people are concerned about privacy on the internet in general without understanding any technical details. So there will probably be some people that browse with "incognito" on all the time, just to feel safer.

Plus the obvious.

trapper• 18 years ago

That presentation is amazing. Everyone else (adobe, microsoft, sun, ibm, w3c) must be shi*%@ng themselves!

I can't wait to use it. I'm sick of FF's crap memory footprint and single processes. Bring it.

kilowatt3• 18 years ago

Agreed on the presentation.

What struck me is how technical it was (for a comic book quick overview). It's obviously geared towards developers--they really wanted to plant their flag in the sand and say "we're doing this: here is why it is good."

rglovejoy2• 18 years ago

I liked that the actual developers were giving the presentation in comic book form, instead of showing anonymous people. Or worse: imagine it Google had hired Marvel or DC to do the comic. We would be seeing Batman or Reed Richards trying to explain how multiple processes are more efficient.

The term "rock star" is way overused in the software field. It's nice to see some developers actually being treated as stars.

kylec• 18 years ago

As someone who is fed up when Flash crashes and takes down the whole browser IT'S ABOUT TIME someone put each tab on a separate thread! The small performance penalty will pay for itself abundantly with the improved stability it will provide.

wmorein• 18 years ago

IE was already multi-threaded (just not multi-process): http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/05/26/422103.aspx

netcan6• 18 years ago

Question:

Is there any/much value in controlling the browser or owning the most popular browser in itself?

*By 'in itself' I mean ignoring advantages such as Google's: 'We need web-apps to work' or Microsoft's: 'We need web-apps not to work'

If default Search Engine settings are actually worth what Google paid ($55m for 15% of the market X 3 yrs) & no other revenue sources exist, the market's worth about $120m p/y. is that it?

william424• 18 years ago

Google gets most of its money from advertising. Eyeballs == Money.

netcan6• 18 years ago

Where is the browser == eyeballs?

BTW, I think that the big success of Google is in realising that's really true. Web Searches == money. But not inherently.

ryanmahoski• 18 years ago

Windows only. No Mac, no Linux.

pqs• 18 years ago

In the post in the official google blog they said that they are also preparing versions for linux and osx. This makes sense, as they want everybody to be able to use the webabs of the future.

siculars• 18 years ago

good move google! this has nothing to do with firefox. it has everything to do with webkit and ie. basically if you wanna be a big player you need your own toys. a google browser will be googles entry to to the new app space on an equal footing with ms. this is a place where you can bring in money by sale or subscription - without advertising.

but beyond that, google needs to compete with apples webkit on the mobile front. they need to embed a browser in android - preferably their browser ;) so far mozilla does not have an answer to the mobile webkit.

i dont see this as a dig on mozilla, google is funding them. i see mozilla remaining the best consumer app and goggles chrome becoming standard fair for mobile and desktop app browsing/computing for enterprise.

neetij• 18 years ago

Techcrunch has some screenshots from an official Google Chrome site (now taken offline) - http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/01/first-public-screen-cap...

b1te• 18 years ago

im having trouble explain chrome's advantages to the gf - multi-threaded javascript engine? - its def geared towards developers..

rglovejoy2• 18 years ago

All I am seeing is a lot of material about Chrome, but has anyone here actually tried it out? It is supposed to be available today (September 2); has anyone been able to download it?

*edit: fixed grammar error

raheemm• 18 years ago

Wow! What an amazing explanation - I learned a lot about browser technologies just from reading this.

rcoder• 18 years ago

I'm curious why there aren't any platform partisans screaming "bloody murder" about Google's obvious flaunting of GUI tradition on this one. Putting tabs on top of the window titlebar may be the greatest UI innovation since tabs themselves, but it's going to make Chrome windows look and act differently from every other application on the user's computer.

That being said, a browser using WebKit + Gears + solic process sandbox model appeals to me a lot. Props to Google for explicitly referencing the Biba model, too -- if they can get web developers to start paying attention to the body of security theory published in the last 40 years, the browser itself could be a huge flop, and still leave us better off than we are currently.

schtog• 18 years ago

I'm using Chrome right now and it is fine, a cleaned up Firefox, but nothing mindblowing.

What do I sign up for in terms of privacy? I didn't read through the whole deal(who does?) but saw some stuff about ads, does Google track my surfing?

I'm missing the top right Firefox searchbar where I can search wikipedia and other sites though.

Google Chrome, Google's Browser Project

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