Revised: I'm using the new Google Chrome browser
The Internet — and the rest of the press, newspapers included — has been buzzing loudly with the initially leaked and now confirmed news of Google's new Web browser.
After the leak, Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal reported on the new Google Chrome application — currently available for Windows only but with planned versions for the Mac and Linux to follow.
Chrome doesn't represent the first time Google has taken on the technology world's big dog, which in case you didn't guess is Microsoft.
Here's the Wall Street Journal's main story on Chrome, which includes a bit of helpful analysis about Google and Chrome's place in the computing universe.
This all got out of the proverbial bag when a HUGE comic book leaked on the Web (yes, a comic book; that's how the kids do things these days, I guess). If you want to know a lot about Google Chrome, I suggest you click the link and read this long — 38 pages in all — comic book. Or is it a graphic novel?
Before I get into all of that, let me recount my morning:
I got in, and while Google Chrome was supposed to be available for download, there was no indication of that anywhere on Google. Search revealed that there was a Google Chrome page, but clicking on the link led back to the main Google page.
Then came the announcement of a noon PDT news conference at the Googleplex in Northern California, at which time Google Chrome would again be available for download.
I went to the Google Chrome site about 12:30 p.m. PDT and found an actual link to download the browser.
Have you ever tried to download a "marquee" application on its first day of availability? The most recent was Firefox 3, and Mozilla's effort to set a bogus Guinness World Record, combined with all-around clamor for the new browser, made it impossible to download at first.
The same thing happens with the popular Ubuntu GNU/Linux operating system. Whenever there's a new version of it, good luck on getting it any time during the first week; the servers get hammered.
But with Google Chrome, I clicked the link and had a small installer app in literally 5 seconds. I clicked on that installer icon and had the full Google Chrome browser in about a minute. I do have a fast connection here at the Daily News, but this was still quicker than I'd ever expect.
So if you want to download Google Chrome, I don't suspect you'll have any trouble at all.
And if the title of this post has already left your mind, let me repeat: I'm using Google Chrome right now.
When you run Google Chrome, opening up a new tab tells you that you are running Google Chrome Beta, meaning this isn't considered a "final" release. But Google is notorious for tagging its products as "beta" for extended periods of time. Google Docs is still in beta, and it's been out for over a year. Google Groups finally lost its beta tag, but did carry the beta designation for an awfully long time.
But even though Google Chrome is technically a beta app, it looks polished, albeit very basic, in its first public release. Clicking on the little "wrench" icon near the upper right portion of the Google Chrome window, then clicking on About Google Chrome, yields the following version information:
Google Chrome 0.2.149.27
As is customary during a pre-release, Chrome hasn't yet hit the 1.0 in its version number. That will happen when it leaves beta.
But does any of that matter? So far I've had quite a bit of luck with Google Chrome when it comes to rendering Web pages. It works flawlessly with Movable Type. According to the Google comic book (yeah, I'm using a comic book to write this ... lovely, eh?), one of the things that the Google engineers are pushing in Chrome is a faster Javascript rendering engine. And things do, indeed, seem to be appearing faster.
Where does Google Chrome come from?
It is based on the open-source WebKit layout engine, which is what Apple based its Safari browser on. What else uses WebKit? Apple's iPhone and Google's open-source Android mobile-phone operating system do.
And the Epiphany Web browser, which is based on Mozilla's Gecko layout engine, has been planning to move to WebKit for some time. The super-fast Konqueror browser which is an integral part of the KDE desktop environment that's very popular with Linux users, has also adopted WebKit. Not so ironically, WebKit itself is based on the KHTML rendering engine that used to power Konqueror.
One thing that comes out of all this: WebKit and Gecko, Firefox and Konqueror, and now Google Chrome are all open-source projects. That means anybody can see how they're made and add to them if they wish. They can even fork them and create their own project, just so long as proper credit is given and their code is made as freely available as that upon which it's based.
Security: Google claims that the Chrome browser is very secure and by the nature of the way it's put together doesn't allow malicious entities on the Internet the same access to your PC as "traditional" applications.
One way Google does this is in the way Chrome is installed.
"Normal" applications, including the Firefox and Internet Explorer Web browsers, are installed in the C:\Program Files directory, where all of your applications tend to live. Chrome, however, is installed here: C:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\
If I'm understanding this correctly (and it's entirely possible that I do not), being installed under "Documents and Settings" instead of "Program Files" is one way of keeping Chrome, or anything interfacing with it, in its own area, if you will. Chrome is intent on keeping outside entities away from your PC's most critical files.
Cool Google Chrome features for geeks:
Do we need another Web browser? With Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and others I'm forgetting about for Windows; Firefox, Safari, Opera, Camino and more for Mac OS; Firefox, Opera, Epiphany, Konqueror, Dillo and many more for Linux/Unix?
I'm going to answer yes. The Web browser is the most-used application on the great majority of PCs — and by a very, very long shot at that.
Innovation in the browser is key to allowing users to have the best possible Web experience by allowing developers to expand the notion of what it means to interact with the Internet. The World Wide Web didn't begin as a dynamic entity. Instead it offered a different way to view static Internet content. That notion has changed dramatically, and now the Internet is awash in things that look like applications, act like applications and work like applications. Via the browser, we write, edit images, do our banking and shopping, communicate in real time, watch and interact with all kinds of media. The pipe sends us more and more things every day.
A new Web browser is just one way to change the game as far as the way we use the Internet. I'm not the only one predicting that Web browsers, as stand-alone entities, will become less important in the years ahead. There will be all kinds of ways to interact with the network, both PC-application based and browser-based. And these entities will be created in many different ways.
Google wants the browser to serve as a better conduit for its many products, from search ads to Google Docs. Controlling its own Web browser frees Google from any dependence on Microsoft or even Mozilla, which is almost wholly funded by Google search revenue via the Firefox browser. Curiously (or perhaps not), Google just signed a new agreement to keep the search-ad money flowing to Mozilla. And in the Chrome comic book, Mozilla is thanked by Google for its innovation in the browser space.
But will a new browser with a big backer (and is anybody bigger than Google at this point?) help or hurt IE and Firefox?
To the extent that Google Chrome drives innovation at Microsoft and Mozilla — and nothing spurs Microsoft on like somebody trying to eat its lunch, Chrome is a win for the user. More competition always means better apps.
For the other browser-makers, Chrome will grab market share. No doubt there. The app is quite good out of the box, and from all appearances, it can only get better.
It's early at this point. But you can bet that every single employee at Microsoft, every coder on the Mozilla project, and every blathering tech journalist (and I do use that term loosely, even referring to myself) is trying Google Chrome right now.
And while Google Chrome has a very basic, almost stripped-down look, that's pure Google. Expect Chrome to change quite a bit over the next six months, with features being added, functionality refined and bugs eliminated.
For me, the pudding will be much closer to proofing when Google Chrome is available for Mac OS and Linux. How long will that take? Not long, I figure. Most people use Windows, by far. But hardcore geeks gravitate toward the Mac and open-source operating systems like Linux. Until they get Chrome for their favored systems, they'll be a grumbly bunch.
The bigger picture
Google has a lot of tentacles out there, and while a rumored Google operating system, which could eliminate the need for Microsoft Windows on a desktop PC, has not come to pass, a Google-branded Web browser to go along with Office-killer Google Docs (and the Google Gears component for offline use) means that Microsoft in particular is more vulnerable now than ever. And buying Yahoo won't help one little bit.
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Steven Rosenberg aims to learn what he does not know. He writes about it here.
Steven Rosenberg aims to learn what he does not know. He writes about it here.
I downloaded it when it went live as well with the same result. Its still a little raw, but then again, I can't expect the same amount of customized content as Firefox. For a beta that was just announced 24 hours ago, its pretty good. I'm having a problem getting Java to run however. I think this is localized to me as ZDNet.com has reported that it handles Java even faster than Firefox 3. I love the download interface, it works even better than customized Firefox. Adding tabs is a breeze. Even the start page is nice, although I'd prefer a page like Opera's "speed-dial" where I can set the pages I want instead of what I visit most often.
I have long promoted benevolent dictatorship under Google, so this just further proves my point. Smooth and fast, this browser can only improve. Only downside is there was no simultaneous OS X and Linux release.
One slight concern I have is that the memory footprint is not too lean, ranging roughly 9MB more than Firefox 3 (although far far less than the resource hog IE 7). This isn't a concern for any of my Windows machines, but could make a speed difference on my slightly older Linux box...