Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Google Takes on the Browser

The company has tackled everything else in the Web world, so why not take a stab at creating a browser? Google is doing just that with Chrome, a new Web browser that promises to "get out of your way and get you where you want to go."

Google has built Chrome on the premise that the browser isn't really that important; it's just a "tool to run the important stuff." Given this, Chrome is designed to be clean, stable, and fast-loading, with the ability to run the most sophisticated, rich content-based Websites out there.

Google argues that there's an increasing need for such a browser given that Web pages today are no longer just static pages; they're full-fledged applications running everything from moving video to chat rooms. So not only do people need better support for running these "applications", but they also need the ability to run multiple applications (or Web pages) at a time without a reduction in speed and load time for the others.

As is customary with Google, the code will be open source so that others are free to use it (Google actually used components from Apple's Webkit and Mozilla's Firefox to create Chrome). Whether it will live up to its promises, or be able to rival popular browsers like Internet Explorer, remains to be seen.

A beta version of Chrome for Windows is available today, and instructions on where/how to download it will be made public at 11 a.m. this morning. Will you try it?

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

to b*****y right I'll download it - just gutted it isn't already here!!

Anonymous said...

I just downloaded it last night and it is great. It's clean, simple and quick. The only thing is it's still in beta form so some websites don't recognize it like Microsoft Live Hotmail. I'd still recommend it to anyone who wants a user friendly way of surfing the internet