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Rory Cellan-Jones

Chrome - first impressions

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 2 Sep 08, 20:00 GMT

I spent an hour this afternoon at Google's London HQ getting a first look at its new browser, Chrome. So here are a few hurried first impressions...

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The first thing you see when you open the browser is a clutch of snapshots of some of your favourite websites, garnered from your search history. Click and you go straight to them. There's also a box enabling you to search your web history.

But it's the address bar which is intended to do much of the heavy lifting. Start typing in the box- and it begins to offer suggested URLs or offer web searches. Google seems pretty excited about this - but to my eyes it looked much like Firefox's "Awesome Bar".

As with all new browsers, tabs are an important feature, though Google is claiming its tabs are extra special. They each feature the address bar, and they're designed so that if a site crashes in one tab, it doesn't bring down the whole browser, a policy Google calls "kill the tab, not the browser".

Privacy is now a growing concern for many web users, and Chrome has an "Incognito" mode, which means that if your partner comes to the computer after you've been using it, they will not see which sites you have visited.

Used on Google's network, Chrome did appear to load pages very quickly and efficiently - and if those who install the beta (only for Windows right now) experience similar speeds, then it could gain quite a following.

Overall, the browser does not feature anything that will blow the socks off a Firefox user - and persuading the mass of web users, many of whom will be unaware of which browser they use, to go and download Chrome will not be easy.

So Chrome borrows many of its ideas - and its technology - from other browsers. But more choice can only be a good thing, and help spark further innovation.

Darren Waters

Google's Chrome and the browser end game

  • Darren Waters
  • 2 Sep 08, 01:47 GMT

The news that Google is launching its own open source browser, called Chrome, has understandably got the blogosphere all excited.

Google search pageIt's certainly the biggest news in the browser space since Firefox started to dent Internet Explorer's lead and many people see this as a re-ignition of the browser wars.

A few things struck me:

1. For all Mozilla's success with Firefox, it still only has a 20% market share globally. I'll be fascinated to see if the Google cachet and brand reach will be able to drive Chrome's success any higher than Firefox.

2. What does this mean for Firefox long term? Google is one of the biggest supporters of Firefox. It has contributed financially and in terms of development talent. According to PaidContent, "just last week Google extended its support of the Mozilla foundation until 2011".

Despite this, Mozilla will be feeling a little uncomfortable right now.
The two organisations are next door neighbours in Mountain View and I imagine the gnashing of teeth from Mozilla were easily heard across at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway.

3. What does this mean for Safari? Just like Safari, Chrome is built on the open source web kit browser. Does this boost Safari because they are a common platform? Or does it mean game over for Apple's hopes in the browser space? I suspect more of the latter.

4. This is going to mean more work for web developers. It may be based on open standards but undoubtedly web application designers are going to have to take into account the quirks and differences of Chrome to really exploit the browser.

5. Chrome is the open source desktop people have been demanding from Google for many years. Linux supporters have long been asking for Google to release a consumer version of the Linux OS Google itself uses internally. But Google has always resisted this. And because the browser is becoming as flexible as the desktop, Chrome, in many ways, is the open source OS people have been calling for.

6. Do we really need another browser? There's Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Camino, Flock and many, many others.

7. This is really about building a browser which leverages Google's own web applications and makes it more seamless to use functionality like Google Gears, which blurs the offline and online space. Just as Internet Explorer 8 ties in with Windows Live, Chrome will make the Google space more united.

8. We really need a better browser for mobiles and not desktops. Expect to see Chrome as part of Google's open source Android platform for mobiles.

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