Google reinvents browsing with Chrome
Sunday, 28 September 2008
Md. Saquib Hussain
Google's new browser has appeared a few weeks ago. Like any other Google product it created quite a buzz. This striking new browers, Google Chrome, promted millions of blog posts, reviews, and coverage on the worled Wide Web. It's interesting to see the broader view of this release.
Google Chrome, quite frankly speaking, is a new genre of browser. It's unlike anything that's out there - the typical Google way of inventing. They kept one concept in mind, to reinvent the perception of browsers. As stated by Google, browsers were originally designed to browse web pages, but in this era of consumer driven Internet, the life changing Web 2.0 is definitely a lot more than mere browsing experience. Web sites act more and more like applications themselves. That's exactly how Chrome works. Chrome is capable of taking advantage of our system in an amazingly efficient way, making each tab (site) act like an individual process. They have their own memory space, and acts like a totally separate application. Switching on Task Manager, one would see all those tabs acting as a separate process. This adds stability too, when something is loston one tab; it doesn't kill the whole browser, along with other pros like increased responsiveness and speed. The browsing really felt to be significantly faster than any other browser.
If you you try this on Windows Vista, the top window border sort of mixes seamlessly with the tabs and gives that IE-7 transparent frosted glass look. And like Internet Explorer, tabs would by default open right beside the one you are browsing (instead of at the end like Firefox). The tabs preview is also like those add-ons in Firefox, it's like a package of our must have plugins, all in one place. There's also stealth mode, to browse sites without your footprint, making sure to protect your privacy, a feature much advertised in Microsoft's next browser, Internet Explorer 8. The ability to search within address bar might not be entirely new, but it also instantly searches for possible URLs, another enhancement making my life easier. It also has excellent protection for phishing. The minimalistic design barely leaves you wondering, and everything works so naturally right, I wonder how they always do great work on usability. If needed, address bar and the other browser buttons can be taken off, making the website itself look like a running application. Google states that they just didn't want to stand in the way of users and websites, making a browser that feels transparent. As of yet, Mozilla Firefox can be referred as the best browser out there - thanks to so many useful plugins and a great user base, but Chrome is open source and it's likely that Google might start promoting third party plugins anytime soon. I do miss my smooth scrolling, download manager, online bookmark management, and a few other plugins, but I'm keeping my figures crossed this time. To live up to the massive testing requirement of this new browser, Google took the advantage of their huge data gathered from crawling websites. It's clear that their search engine is helping them have an edge on development process, making it a great and unique resource for the development team at Mountain View.
Thanks to Internet Explorer coming as the default browser in Windows, Microsoft still holds the largest share of users when it comes to browsers. Most users will not go through the hassle of installing any new browsers, not mention the fact that some don't even know that alternates exist. World is booming through the power of World Wide Web now, and controlling the browser user base makes a company control the content that is found online, and therefore this is a crucial part in the world of IT today.
Since Google sort of leading the Internet race here, a browser from them indeed makes sense. But it sort of comes out at a time when Microsoft couldn't possibly take any more hits. Before even the Internet Explorer 8 made an apparent exposure to the public, Chrome sort of stole the show. If pressure from Mozilla, Apple, and open source community wasn't enough, this certainly is making people in Redmond sit in round tables and scratch heads. IE-7 has been undoubtedly better than IE-6, but let's face it, Microsoft can do better. When it comes to bringing in competitive products, Microsoft hasn't been able to bring browsers recently that not only live up to the challenges thrown by others, but to take it to the next level. Not to mention, the next browser from Microsoft shares one common pattern seen in all of their new software, be a lot more resource hungry. I haven't been able to find anything from Microsoft's IE that feels yet as much as an innovation as it does when coming from Firefox, and now, from Chrome. Between IE and Firefox, I guess it's the former that will be more affected.
Looking at Google's beta browser's release strategy, it makes things more obvious. First of all, Chrome is made open-source; anyone can look and see what's been going on inside their innovation, making pressure on Microsoft more intense. Google wants to share their ideas on Chrome, make more people learn and move the web forward. Their strategy can actually help all browsers better, and therefore give a even better end user experience. Not to mention, this browser can benefit from almost all the advantages that Firefox had. But it does make one wonder if Internet Explorer developers are going to reverse engineer version 9 from Chrome.
What's more of a concern is an open-source project this big, not officially released for trying out in open-source operating systems. Apparently this beta version has been primarily released for Windows XP and Vista platform. Although one can go through the developer documentation to build Chrome on Linux, it's clearly not yet ready. Google mentioned themselves that, "There is no working Chromium-based browser on Linux. Although many Chromium submodules build under Linux and a few unit tests pass, all that runs is a command-line "all tests pass" executable." Even though Google loves open-source - may be not as much as they want to compete in Windows environment, due to the large user base.
Google Chrome has proved itself to be a promising product. Mountain View or Redmond, as long as guys there are on a cold war, it only means one thing for consumers like us, better products for value. Although I can't wait to see answers from Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera Software, and Apple to this, I doubt how much they can put up with Google, if everyone really decides to go on a browser war.
(The writer is a Training & Implementation Specialist at Therap Services, LLC. He can be reached at saquib.h@gmail.com)
Google's new browser has appeared a few weeks ago. Like any other Google product it created quite a buzz. This striking new browers, Google Chrome, promted millions of blog posts, reviews, and coverage on the worled Wide Web. It's interesting to see the broader view of this release.
Google Chrome, quite frankly speaking, is a new genre of browser. It's unlike anything that's out there - the typical Google way of inventing. They kept one concept in mind, to reinvent the perception of browsers. As stated by Google, browsers were originally designed to browse web pages, but in this era of consumer driven Internet, the life changing Web 2.0 is definitely a lot more than mere browsing experience. Web sites act more and more like applications themselves. That's exactly how Chrome works. Chrome is capable of taking advantage of our system in an amazingly efficient way, making each tab (site) act like an individual process. They have their own memory space, and acts like a totally separate application. Switching on Task Manager, one would see all those tabs acting as a separate process. This adds stability too, when something is loston one tab; it doesn't kill the whole browser, along with other pros like increased responsiveness and speed. The browsing really felt to be significantly faster than any other browser.
If you you try this on Windows Vista, the top window border sort of mixes seamlessly with the tabs and gives that IE-7 transparent frosted glass look. And like Internet Explorer, tabs would by default open right beside the one you are browsing (instead of at the end like Firefox). The tabs preview is also like those add-ons in Firefox, it's like a package of our must have plugins, all in one place. There's also stealth mode, to browse sites without your footprint, making sure to protect your privacy, a feature much advertised in Microsoft's next browser, Internet Explorer 8. The ability to search within address bar might not be entirely new, but it also instantly searches for possible URLs, another enhancement making my life easier. It also has excellent protection for phishing. The minimalistic design barely leaves you wondering, and everything works so naturally right, I wonder how they always do great work on usability. If needed, address bar and the other browser buttons can be taken off, making the website itself look like a running application. Google states that they just didn't want to stand in the way of users and websites, making a browser that feels transparent. As of yet, Mozilla Firefox can be referred as the best browser out there - thanks to so many useful plugins and a great user base, but Chrome is open source and it's likely that Google might start promoting third party plugins anytime soon. I do miss my smooth scrolling, download manager, online bookmark management, and a few other plugins, but I'm keeping my figures crossed this time. To live up to the massive testing requirement of this new browser, Google took the advantage of their huge data gathered from crawling websites. It's clear that their search engine is helping them have an edge on development process, making it a great and unique resource for the development team at Mountain View.
Thanks to Internet Explorer coming as the default browser in Windows, Microsoft still holds the largest share of users when it comes to browsers. Most users will not go through the hassle of installing any new browsers, not mention the fact that some don't even know that alternates exist. World is booming through the power of World Wide Web now, and controlling the browser user base makes a company control the content that is found online, and therefore this is a crucial part in the world of IT today.
Since Google sort of leading the Internet race here, a browser from them indeed makes sense. But it sort of comes out at a time when Microsoft couldn't possibly take any more hits. Before even the Internet Explorer 8 made an apparent exposure to the public, Chrome sort of stole the show. If pressure from Mozilla, Apple, and open source community wasn't enough, this certainly is making people in Redmond sit in round tables and scratch heads. IE-7 has been undoubtedly better than IE-6, but let's face it, Microsoft can do better. When it comes to bringing in competitive products, Microsoft hasn't been able to bring browsers recently that not only live up to the challenges thrown by others, but to take it to the next level. Not to mention, the next browser from Microsoft shares one common pattern seen in all of their new software, be a lot more resource hungry. I haven't been able to find anything from Microsoft's IE that feels yet as much as an innovation as it does when coming from Firefox, and now, from Chrome. Between IE and Firefox, I guess it's the former that will be more affected.
Looking at Google's beta browser's release strategy, it makes things more obvious. First of all, Chrome is made open-source; anyone can look and see what's been going on inside their innovation, making pressure on Microsoft more intense. Google wants to share their ideas on Chrome, make more people learn and move the web forward. Their strategy can actually help all browsers better, and therefore give a even better end user experience. Not to mention, this browser can benefit from almost all the advantages that Firefox had. But it does make one wonder if Internet Explorer developers are going to reverse engineer version 9 from Chrome.
What's more of a concern is an open-source project this big, not officially released for trying out in open-source operating systems. Apparently this beta version has been primarily released for Windows XP and Vista platform. Although one can go through the developer documentation to build Chrome on Linux, it's clearly not yet ready. Google mentioned themselves that, "There is no working Chromium-based browser on Linux. Although many Chromium submodules build under Linux and a few unit tests pass, all that runs is a command-line "all tests pass" executable." Even though Google loves open-source - may be not as much as they want to compete in Windows environment, due to the large user base.
Google Chrome has proved itself to be a promising product. Mountain View or Redmond, as long as guys there are on a cold war, it only means one thing for consumers like us, better products for value. Although I can't wait to see answers from Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera Software, and Apple to this, I doubt how much they can put up with Google, if everyone really decides to go on a browser war.
(The writer is a Training & Implementation Specialist at Therap Services, LLC. He can be reached at saquib.h@gmail.com)