Google 'starting from scratch' with own browser, Chrome
Update at 2:36 p.m. PDT: It's official: Google Chrome will be available Tuesday.
Word surfaced Monday of a Web "comic book" introducing Google Chrome, the search giant's long-rumored open-source browser project. While the illustrations, created by cartoonist Scott McCloud, were not announced by Google, they do contain the quotes and likenesses of 19 Google developers.
The detailed, 38-page comic appeared on Google Blogoscoped, an unofficial Google blog. Update: The comic is now available on Google Book Search. The book is broken down into five main sections covering stability; speed; search and the user experience, security, and standards. Here are the key features, according to the book:
Stability
Each tab will run in its own process. These processes will be completely isolated from each other, will be killable from the operating system's process manager, and will be sandboxed to prevent them from accessing information on the user's computer. This architecture should lead to a more stable and more consistent browsing experience--performance of the browser should not degrade over time.
Google is using its search index to prioritize testing of the browser--the pages that are linked to the most from Google Search are getting the most automated hits to make sure Chrome is behaving correctly on them.
Speed
The browser is being written with WebKit, the open-source engine at the core of Apple's Safari and Google's Android. The browser is also getting a new Javascript virtual machine, V8. It's said to be a better solution for complex and rich Web applications--it should yield better performance as well as "smoother drag and drops" in interactive applications.
Search and user experience
In Chrome, browser tabs will take over the interface, becoming the primary navigational element. Each tab will get its own window controls. Users will be able to tear off tabs into standalone windows. (Related: developers will be able to control which window controls appear in a tab, creating, if they wish, Web applications that are embedded in a browser but that appear to be more like traditional desktop apps.)
Chrome's URL entry field will be called the "Omnibox," and, like Mozilla's "Awesome bar," will feed you suggestions based on your browsing history and live search results. It will be respectful of users, the comic says: "Inline completions will never flicker, never flash. It's perfect, aesthetically non-distracting."
The browser's default start page will show thumbnails of the user's most frequently visited pages and a list of their top searches. There will also be a private browsing mode, as IE 8 has.
Security
Chrome's architecture lends itself to secure browsing. Each Web page, or tab, runs in its own process, and is blocked from accessing other processes on the computer. "We've taking the existing process boundary," the comic says, "and made it into a jail." Different and more flexible permissions are being developed for plug-ins, however.
A database and API to access phishing and scam sites will be used in Chrome (and made public), which will hopefully reduce "zero-day" scam exploits. The browser will be constantly updated with this information.
Standards
The browser will be released as an open-source project. Also, Google will build the open-source local runtime Gears into the browser, and is hoping that it is taking up widely to "improve the base functionality of all browsers."
Yes, this is big
CNET News.com Editor in Chief Dan Farber's analysis of Google Chrome Monday was this: "It would be in line with other Google open-source projects, such as OpenSocial and Google Gears. Creating a competitor to Firefox, as well as Internet Explorer and Opera, could spur more innovation."
"Open sourcing the code is a smart way to avoid the 'Google wants to take over the world' fear, but it seems that Google has ambitions to create a comprehensive Internet operating system, including a browser, applications, middleware and cloud infrastructure."
The browser's start page will show thumbnails or previews of the user's most visited sites.
(Credit: Google Blogoscoped)No official confirmation from Google yet, although Kara Swisher of All Things D cites sources who say that Google will make a Chrome download available to users by as early as tomorrow.
See also:
Kara Swisher: Google Ignites a New Browser War With Microsoft By Unveiling One of its Own This Week
Click here for full coverage by CNET News of the Google Chrome launch.
Coverage on Techmeme
Rafe Needleman writes about start-ups, new technologies, and Web 2.0 products, as editor of CNET's Webware. E-mail Rafe.
If google promotes their browser on their website, they will become the dominant browser, guaranteed.
Open source has as much right as IE does to exist in as many different projects as a community wishes to support. Each has benefited from developments that the others have made. Some more so than others. A few are just more guilty of copying the developments and advances made by others to more degree.
Open source has as much right as IE does to exist in as many different projects as a community wishes to support. Each has benefited from developments that the others have made. Some more so than others. A few are just more guilty of copying the developments and advances made by others to more degree.
Break the wedge!
www.breakthewedge.com
Google Chrome represents Google's frustration with the current "state of the art" with browsers, and push that is a direction helpful to Google. I think they are pretty open about that in the comic actually.
and about IE. IE users are different from Open-source browser users.
IE users just use it because it comes with windows
But don't forget that if you want to update your Windows version you depend on IE, and there are other known issues about using FF. E.G. handling your on line bank account.
At least my account does. ;(
It seems that Google dips their toes into everything these days and have strayed quite a bit from their mission of "Organizing the worlds information"
Their behavior seems to be that of a 700 foot giant that is clumsy as hell because they don't know how to walk, and chew bubblegum at the same time. They knock over buildings (Questionable privacy on Google.) without realizing it. They sit on a bunch of people (keeps parts of Android closed...then opens it up.) and don't even know it.
And finally the biggest problem that Google has and something I think MS is finally waking up to is that they act as if they are a 50 person company. When you become a mega company your behavior in the market needs to be so clean you can perform surgery off if it. Any type of inappropriate behavior, no matter how small, by an individual or group in the company reflects on the company as a whole, and in turn can and often IS blown out of proportion by the general geek public. OMG! Google EVIL!!! OH NOES!
If they don't have one, Google needs a cultural czar that functions as the company's conscience. And no I'm not talking someone from HR. But an honest to God person who looks at the company from the outside. They aren't part of Google. They take the temperature of Google from the public's perspective. They work for Google, the can communicate too Google and google's execs can communicate back, but they don't get internal group e-mails. They don't get the inside buzz. They are on the outs so they can see what the world perceives Google as.
You don't know that Google uses all of its software to track users? It seems that you are the clueless one!
Read this and come back here and apologize for being an imbecile: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10030522-56.html
What part of spyware don't you understand?
But I'll definitely give this browser a try when it's out there. Yet switch to it from firefox?! I've gotten so used to FF & all its wonderful extensions that I seriously doubt I'll do it unless Chrome has something extraordinary up its sleeve. I think we should all just wait & see.
Ads are put out to, well, advertise. but your browsing habits are checked up on by many different "outfits".
A few are;
ad.yieldmanager, adrevolver, adspointroll, ads.sun, adsfac, adstech, advertising, artnet, bs.serving-sys, checkmystats, doubleclick, loomia, tribalfusion, on down to zedo. These are the ones who do the tracking of what you do on the net. They are also working hard at putting food on the table and paying the mortgage same as so many of us.
Google came out with a search engine in the '90s that was the best bar none, at the time. Frankly I can't be bothered using another. They have worked hard & long to give the best service for (in my case) no payment at all.
So stop looking in the wrong places for the sinister!
As a Google supporter, would hate for them to kill Firefox...
Meanwhiule, Google launching a browser with their serach engine as the default, should remove all the objections Google has been putting up with the DOJ and EU, against Microsoft making Live search the default search in IE.
Microsft should be able to make Live serach the default in IE without to much worry about anti-trust now.
This could work out great for Microsoft.
Google is not a monoply. MS is.
It all depends on the deployment of the browser and will it truly do things that Firefox and IE can't do.
Google is every bit as much a monopoly in search as Microsoft is on the desktop.
Internet uers who use Google are not in the habit of downloading Google spyware. On the other hand, over 90% of internet users on the planet, use Windows, with IE alreaddy installed in it.
Google has been promoting Firefox for years, and IE still rules. From what I have seen so far, IE 8 trumps every browser out there. It wil take less than a week for big security holes to be discovered in any Google browser that they bring out, even if Google stole the whole browser in toto from Firefox.
Nothing on the internet gets more promotion, propaganda and branding than Firefox does. Plus Google has been promoting Firefox for years, and IE still rules. All Google is gping to do when they switch their prmotions from Firefox to Google browser, is take some of the uers from Firefox. I am quite happy for the iopen source communists to fight amongst themselves
@ davidspark :"If Google puts a "Download our new browser" button on the front page, they will steal tons of users away from IE"
# 1. IE already comes pre-installed on every single one of the over 260 million Windows PC's that are curently sold every year. Its irrelevant if Google puts a "download now" button or not. They can't get Google browser into anywhere near as many PC;s as IE does.
# 2. IE 8 beta 2 is currently better than any browser out there. Consumers are going to have a far less reason to switch tgan they had before.
# 3. Google's propensity to install spoyware on people's comouters, and spy on everythung they do, and keep those recorsd on Google's servers , is going tio scare most consumers away from this American version of the Soviet KGB, known as Google.
Google= market share leader
MS = Illegal monopoly.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Oh yeah, they are eating MS's lunch. Carry on.
Oh Puleeze!
Microsoft sells Windows and Office. No spyware there.
You wanna see spyware, you'd better go to the Apple Mac, which pcks all kinds of spyware junk from Google and others on any Mac they sell.
You sir are a moron. I don't mean that as an insult, but a statement of fact. Half of Google's feature require data mining. Something you OBVIOUSLY don't understand. You are simply latching onto the opinion de jour that many uneducated, at least when it comes to tech, people throw out when they have nothing meaningful to say. Do you really think that Google is trying to steal your identity? Trying to sell your data? Trying to screw you personally? The minute they start pulling crap like that the house of cards falls. It behooves them to act responsibly with your data, which they are. You are no different then the people complaining about street view in Gmaps and how we are doooooooomed because of the invasion of privacy...then along comes someone to point out you can report anything in streetview and ask Google to remove it via the help function. Again moron. Form your own opinions instead of snagging the tin foil hat wearing fool's opinion.
It makes you look more intelligent.
http://www.sharkzonedesign.com
http://kreuzer33.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/google-chrome-new-browser-coming-soon/
You mean by stealing Firefox and giving it another name, and then releasing yet another OS for mobile phones, which the biggest mobile phone outfit on the planet, Nokia, refusing to even look at?
Yeah its "huge" alright..like a worm.
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by theBike45
September 1, 2008 3:48 PM PDT
- Why doesn't Google try to do something that will help the technology rather than simply function as a new way to unload money from the pockets of web users? I love the way Google presents each new money-making scheme as doing some public good. Now they've stolen the Mozilla Firefox browser and changed it just enough to cause problems for web developers. Notice the complete lack of a set of standardized, comprehensive tests that can be taken by any new browser to ensure that web apps will
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Reply to this comment
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See all 70 Comments >>work on that spiffy new (and buggy) browser. The web is one giant mass of inefficiency and lies. Google promises to continue that trend. I see us exchanging one crappy monopoly for another crappy monopoly. When will computer people ever learn to demand standardization to ensure that monopolies simply cannot take hold and strangle us?