Google spread its wings into the browser market today with a pretty impressive and promising package – Chrome. The browser being truly fast, redefines speed. With a load of amazing features, it stands up give a tough fight to Firefox and Internet Explorer. Google released a comic strip to introduce the new browser and all its features: Read it here.
Here is the list of its features in a nutshell:
1. Impressively fast; beats Firefox!
2. The architecture looks promising! Read the comic to know more.
3. Flash, Java and JS applications loads very quickly!
4. Each tab runs on a process of its own, and the browser comes with a built-in process manager to view what website is using more system resources! -Truly innovative!
4. Enhances the Firefox-like location bar to suggest searches, URLs from bookmarks and also from top google searches.
5. By default, a new tab shows the top websites visited by the user and also, recent web searches and most-used web searches.
6. Web applications like GMail works quicker. Hotmail is yet to recognize the browser and shows up a warning saying that the browser may be incompatible and proceeds to the classic version – which seems pretty fast as well.
With Google’s entry into the browser market, the war is expected just to get bigger and the competition much more intense! Conclusively, whatever results from this, eventually benefits the consumer. π
Moreover, Google uses Webkit framework for building Chrome and better yet, it is open source; making way for further rapid updates!
Like Ishwar just pointed out: “The days of ‘Google dominates earth’ is not far..” π
Manoj 
15 responses to “Google Chrome impressive! Download it now!”
jus downloaded i ra…. was wondering if the host of features provided comes packed in 474 kb setup file…!
k…. just realised… it was not a setup after all…! π
Hehe.. Its a downloader-cum-installer. π
should be interesting to see if Chrome works more efficiently than FireFox and IE… if it’s faster than Firefox, since isn’t IE, then i’ll use it
Aah. Faster, yes. But overall efficiency, I’m not sure. We have to wait till we get extensions for Chrome.
Until then, FF FTW. π
@Manoj
Nice review. Chrome IS the fastest browser now in use. Yes, even faster than Safari. They have used benchmarks to prove it. The best part is that its written in AJAX. So it loads AJAX, XML and PHP pages very fast. But for others it is relatively slower. And you have not listed the cons of this product. It does not support feeds as yet.
@Anniyan:
Well, its not written in AJAX – could say its written for AJAX. π Its built upon a browser framework called WebKit.
It loads the JS and Ajax faster because the browser has a multithreaded virtual handlers for JS and Ajax separate for different tabs. (Read the comic if you have time)
Yeah. I dint think of all the cons yet. The biggest one of them is that the release is the first public release and right now a bare browser – no extensions or extra functionalities like RSS readers.
Downloaded and is using it. Got rid of Opera as my back-up browser.
If the FF addons searchstatus willbe ported to chrome, I’ll get rid of FF too. π
There’s one thing I noticed about Chrome though, the graph for WordTrackers gtrends takes ages to load. Or it might just be might set-up.
might…my. π
Yeah. I’m waiting to see how Chrome will incorporate extensions.
But it will take time for chrome to become as popular as firefox. π
@Manoj
My friend, I know it’s written using Webkit. It was also the same toolkit used to develop Apple’s Safari. But Webkit itself was written in AJAX. I clarified it with one of my friends who is a developer for Apple Inc.
@Anniyan:
Oh.. π That’s cool! I thought AJAX was only for Web Applications and not Desktop applications. I guess its gone beyond that now.
Definitely, I agree on most (u expected this, right?) points. Agreeably, it’s faster, loads AJAX faster etc, handles its processes all true.
There are some issues lurking, i suppose. i don’t know if you’ve noticed these.(i run Chrome on 1.7GHz P4, 512MB 333MHz ram).
The idea of one process per tab is innovative, but comes with its strings attached. the whole idea of having thread (The so called lightweight processes) is all about not having many processes being forked, FF use a thread a tab idea. Chrome is going back on evolution, lol. no, seriously, think of FF’s feature of opening all the news tbs in one go. Chrome, as of present architecture will find it difficult to do. forking those many processes will lead to mounting of huge over head, at least momentarily till all tabs have comfortably found a snug space on the RAM.
Next, AJAX works faster. but i think you might’ve noticed, it uses higher bandwidth. Having a diff proc for each tab, prompts chrome to be brave enough to load a lot of things u might not need but are easily managed. For us BSNL pay per byte users, this is not entirely enticing.
I use internet usually while programming too, and i use NetBeans IDE, which is quite heavy by itself (it take about 2 min to lad on my comp π¦ ). loading up new tabs(consequently forking new processes) spikes the processor usage steeply, during which my netbeans freezes. not very desirable, innit?
one more thing i’ve noticed is that the tabs which have flash vids take longer to close, and the whole browser seems to freeze for a sec.. wonder why.
Yeah webkit is free and Google loves open source enough to marry it. but someone please find me a link to download chrome for linux/unix. . i mean seriously WTH?
still i love chrome, and google, for we’re comparing chrome beta with FF3, FF has seen a dozen releases, while this is first for chrome.
But yup, i agree with myself, π , google is on its way to world domination
Cheers
@Ishwar:
True. Google chrome has its features, bugs and ‘featured bugs’. π
Still, the ingenuity has to be praised. And what other than innovation fuels the future of technology?
Though everyone seems to be speaking about Chrome, nobody is willing to shift to it as their mainframe browser. Firefox is still the favorite amongst the developers and nettizens (ones who know IE sucks! π )
And, Microsoft is trying hard to regain its market share of the browsers, and I must say that Internet Explorer is becoming pretty good in terms of functionality as well.
And why hasn’t Google released Chrome for Linux? No one knows. It destroys the whole purpose of making it open source and free when people have to pay $100 (or so) for Microsoft Windows to run Chrome! One sane answer to this, its Google vs Microsoft now. No side players involved.
Don’t worry Firefox, we love you no matter what! π
Well worth the download, i downloaded on the first day it was released. All “Google owned” pages load at blazzing speed. Truely Impressive for Google