Google Chrome

Tuesday, 2 September, 2008

If you’ve been living on another planet for the last 24 hours then you might just have missed Google’s typically understated announcement that they are releasing a new web browser called Chrome, designed to meet the deficiences in Firefox, IE and Opera. In particular a simple interface and much faster Javascript engine for running web applications. Only on Windows at the moment, but a Mac and Linux version are currently brewing. Some initial reactions but expect a whole slew of reports tomorrow. However it is fast, Google Mail and Documents are slick and the whole browser experience much more immersive. The download is only 0.5Mb, but this is just an installer program that then downloads a 22Mb data file. Interestingly it installs into the users profile (NOT Program Files). Chrome uses Apples WebKey technology and bits of Firefox. Notably there is no facility for plugins, yet, but this appears to be part of Firefox, using the Google Gears plugin to support offline use of GMail and Documents. So it will interesting to see if this is opened up at all. Also note that the compressed installer is also saved with the installation. Finally, I do wonder how wise installing into a users profile is. Profiles often get corrupted, whilst this appears to mean that each individual user on a PC will need to install Chrome separately.

No doubt Chrome will be picked apart of the next few weeks, however Microsoft should be worried because the OS is becoming more and more irrelevant as browsers provide the channel to SaaS (Software as a Service).