Google releases Chrome web browser
I’m going to declare it now, the 3rd generation of the browser war has begun. Though this time the stakes may be much higher.
Google has taken the fight to IE, Firefox, Safari, and Opera by releasing its own Google branded, WebKit based web browser they have named Chrome. It’s currently only available for Windows, but there are Mac and Linux versions in the pipeline. Here is a screenshot of Chrome in action.
As you can see, the main homepage shows a grid of sites. Whenever you log into Chrome, it automatically shows you a “speed dial” of your 9 most visited websites for easy access. Fortunately, if one of the sites you frequent isn’t necessarily a site you want to show up ON the speed dial, Chrome offers an “incognito” mode, which is similar to the private browsing mode of Safari. It won’t store any information about your session in that mode, and delete any cookies that are generated during the session.
One of the biggest UI changes of Chrome compared to other browsers is that your page tabs are located ABOVE the address bar. In my short period of testing, I found that this worked pretty well for me, but I don’t see much use for it other than just to be different.
Since the browser is WebKit based, it is both standards compliant, and extremely fast. Performance for me was well beyond anything that Firefox 3, IE 7, or Safari 3 could muster. The only browser that came close was the WebKit Nightly Build, which is more or less a beta of what will become Safari 4.
One extremely nice feature of the new browser is the built in task manager. It allows you to kill parts of a page that are hogging ram or processor cycles in much the same way you’d kill an application on your desktop.
All in all, Chrome is a nicely put together web browser and a good debut from Google
The question is, however, with the browser market being so crowded, why would anyone want to try and jump in the fight?
It’s simply a matter of looking into the future. More and more applications are moving into the cloud. Especially with technologies like, Flash, Air, Silverlight, and Apple’s web-based SproutCore engine, the sophistication of Applications that can be run INSIDE a browser window over the web will only increase. As the level of packaged software that requires a certain OS declines, the OS a person’s computer runs will become more and more insignificant, to the point where I wouldn’t be surprised to start seeing devices that simply boot to a browser window.
The browser war this time around is more of an OS war. These companies are jockeying for position to get themselves in the place to make a big jump into being the full OS for always-on internet connected devices in 5-10 years. Either way, you better believe Google wants a piece of that market, and even though they’re late to the game. I expect a serious push by them on this front.
Hopefully it doesn’t fall to the wayside and get left for dead like many Google projects. (I’m looking at you Picasa.) We’ll just have to wait and see.