Preview : Google Joins the Browser Race

There is no denying the fact that Google had been and still is the most

comprehensive search engine for everyone, but on 2nd September, 2008, Google

stunned the world by introducing Chrome, its very own open source Web browser.

Chrome became a part of the existing Web browser fraternity, and entered the Web

browser marketplace, a domain that it never technically owned. But what forced

Google to enter this domain?

Isn't Google trying to fiddle with the (stable) browser platform that exists?

Is Chrome any good? We know, just like us all these questions must be bothering

you, for sure, but before providing answers to all these, let us first take you

to a brief introductory tour of Chrome and its features.

Ab­out Chrome



Chrome like other Google applications is simple with no fuss and frills

attached. It's an Open Source Web browser that's fast, stable, and has been

built with concepts and elements borrowed from Firefox and Apple's Webkit

rendering engine. Despite investing in Mozilla for long, Google opted to use

Webkit engine that powers Apple's Safari Web browser over Firefox's Gecko, shows

that Google wanted the best from the open source world. What Webkit has offered

Chrome: speed. For the appearance, Chrome is bland, it just has an outer skin,

an address bar termed as 'OmniBar,' and two buttons placed beside this address

bar that have most of the options listed to control the browser, this gives user

more space to view the content. Since there are elements from Firefox borrowed

into Chrome, the Firefox users will feel at home as all the shortcuts are same

here. It also provides tabbed browsing, but here's where Chrome becomes

different from other browsers. In Chrome, each tab starts as a different

process, which means that even if a site crashes in one tab, the entire browser

won't come down and the other tabs would remain intact. And just like Windows

Task manager, Chrome too has a task manager which functions the same, you can

monitor and kill a tab (process) that's eating too much of memory or functioning

weirdly.

InCognito browsing starts in a new window having a separate icon on menu bar, while the OmniBar lists suggested URLs from past history as well as search results.

Many features that are new in Chrome; OmniBar for instance is the merged

address bar with the search box. You start typing in the bar, and it will

suggest relevant links based on its intelligence picking up the URLs from the

history.

For privacy, you also get an option of working in Incognito browsing mode;

when you work in this mode, the pages (not even the cookies) you surf won't get

saved in the history. This mode certainly is advantageous for Web users for whom

privacy is the main concern. It also has support for Gears; it can run

applications offline, so one can expect applications like Gmail, Google

Calendar, and Google Docs to be integrated within the browser.

Note: By now you must have downloaded and checked out this browser,

but if you haven't because of any good or bad reason, check out PCQuest DVD of

this month.

Why Google entered this domain?



Common sense implies that this is a result of the Google-Microsoft rivalry, and
when we questioned Google about it, they gracefully agreed, “We didn't think it

was long term good for their users that a major competitor (Microsoft)

effectively controlled access to our services.” Google further said, “The

browser landscape is highly competitive, and people want a browser that puts the

services they want right at their fingertips, respects their personal choices

about how they want to browse and puts them in control of their personal data

online. Though there are already browsers like Internet Explorer and Mozilla,

etc which are doing their job well, but we strongly believe that with Chrome, we

can add value for users and help drive innovation on the Web. We want to drive

the Web browser to shift towards Web 2.0-that is where all future applications

are heading to.”

Is Chrome igniting the Web browser war?



Ever since Chrome came into existence, rumors of a Web browser war have been
doing rounds. People have been thinking that Chrome might create a mess by

fiddling around with the existing Web browser space, and these speculations

became rife when Chrome surpassed Safari's market share in just two days after

its official launch. After that people even went to the extent of saying that

Chrome might become an IE killer in future. But neither do we see any war in the

making nor do we find Chrome capable enough of decimating the leadership of

IE-at least not at the moment. Chrome lovers, don't get us wrong, but you can't

deny that we really can't compare Chrome with stalwarts IE and Mozilla Firefox

etc. at this stage. Agreed, with many features, fast processing, and its

minimalistic appearance, Chrome looks good and performs well too. But it does

not have add-on facilities that Firefox offers which provides users with an

option of customizing the browser as per their needs. With Chrome being open

source, one can expect such extensions coming up for Chrome too, once the

developer community starts backing the Google's open source browser initiative

called Chromium. But for Chrome to reach at the top it surely need's loads of

revamping and developer community's backing-this will take time, may be few

months or years-we will have to wait for atleast another Chrome's Beta to get

released to actually comment about its future.

If Chrome succeeds in near future, then this will be another testament of

Google's leadership (other than the apps) in the Internet space, and even if its

doesn't, users still have something to be happy about-it certainly has

benefitted users by providing them with another option (browser) that they can

look upto.

Want to pitch-in suggestions on Google Chrome? Join us at http://forums.pcquest.com,

under the thread Web-based Solutions > Google introduces browser.