Google Chrome Web Browser Launched

• By The WHIR, September 02, 2008

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By Anastasia Tubanos, theWHIR.com

September 2, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- It seems search engine giant Google (google.com) may be upping the ante again in an effort to counter one of its most aggressive rivals, Microsoft (microsoft.com), with the launch of its own web browser, dubbed Google Chrome.

Google describes Chrome as a "more sophisticated" alternative to competitive web browsers on the market, designed specifically for "today's Internet user" with better capabilities for video and other rich, interactive applications.

The search engine giant says it is launching the free, open-source browser in more than 100 countries for computers running on Microsoft's Windows operating system, with beta versions for Apple and Linux users to be launched in the near future.

Google rather unusually spread the word on its latest product after it prematurely released a digital comic by Scott McCloud that walks users through the new browsers' features, which include individual processes running on separate tabs, a task manager to monitor each tab, and an "incognito" mode, where none of the browsing history is recorded and cookies are deleted when the window is shut.

A panel taken from the comic used by Google to introduce the new browser.

In a blog post Monday, Google's VP of product management Sundar Pichai, and engineering director Linus Upson, said the company was launching Chrome because it "believes it can add value for users and at the same time, help drive innovation on the web."

Pichai and Upson continue to explain:

"On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn't the browser that matters. It's only a tool to run the important stuff - the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today's complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated "sandbox", we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers."

This announcement can almost certainly be seen as a direct challenge to Microsoft, which launched Internet Explorer 8 last week. IE is on 75 percent of most US personal computers but is vulnerable to new challengers. Not to long ago it had close to 90 percent of the market but in recent years Mozilla's Firefox browser and Apple's Safari have eaten into that share.

However, there are certainly skeptics as to whether Google's most recent launch deserves as much hype as it's been receiving or will really be cause for as much headache for Microsoft as has been suggested.

"Google's in no danger of foundering, given its search business still dominates and quite profitably, of course," writes Kara Swisher in her blog, All Things Digital. "But, for all the halo of that, Google has also never had any other similar true home run with any of the other products it has released so far. And to portray Chrome as a Windows killer-which some are quite incorrectly doing-is not the kind of image Google should encourage."

Matt Asay from CNET shares a similar opinion, explaining that "as successful as Google has been, it's been even more notable for its many failures," in its attempts to become a software distributor.

"Yes, the Google Desktop has attracted some fans, but nowhere near a respectable minority," writes Asay in his blog. "Google knows how to piggyback on others' desktop clients. It knows how to monetize web services fantastically well. It knows far less about driving downloads and uptake of its products, excepting its core search functionality."

Either way, with the recent activity we've been seeing between Google and Microsoft over the past few years with Google's launch of its free hosted office applications, then Microsoft's attempts to broaden its search market share through the acquisition of Yahoo!, and now Google's entrance into the web browser market, it seems the tensions between these two giants are likely to escalate.

Tags:  Asia  Windows  Linux  Open-source  Search engine  Internet Explorer  Firefox  Apple  ETT  Flickr  Google  Iona  Microsoft  Mozilla  Yahoo! 

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