Google chrome

[Download Chrome Here]

Anyone heard about Google Chrome? Basiclly it's a web browser that Google are making. There is a beta expected to be released later on today (I'll give you a link to it once I see it).

It's an Open Source browser. By the looks of things it's not designed to be packed with features, but it seems to focus more on performance, reliability and security.

Google have a blog post about it here and a comic-style explaination of the browser here.

I'll give it a go when I can, seems like a worthwhile thing to check out.

[Download Chrome Here]

it won't hurl random advertisments my way will it?

This sounds pretty exciting -- perhaps they want to get a branded web browser functional and established so that it comes standard on android a la safari on the iPhone?

make sure you link us all Pokeh

As far as I know I don't think that you'll get random advertisements. I guess that they would make the default serch provider Google and would just earn revenue off of that to support the costs associated with coding and designing it.

Interestingly Google will still be giving Mozilla cash for Firefox until 2011, even though they're both turning in to competitors now. Annoyingly I can't remember where I found that information out from.

Anyway, as-of time of posting this messge, it's still not up for download.

yeah apparently the site went live for a few moments earlier, screenshots look good.

Seems to have a type of speed dial feature but it displays your top 9 sites and i think it updates them. I'm really interested in this

also they're not really trying to compete with firefox as they're openly offering the features to other browsers - i expect firefox's next big update to merge a lot of the features we'll see

Can't wait for this bad boy now!

What I meant was that Google Chrome may "steal" a couple of Firefox's users.

Although there's difference between the two: Google Chrome, from the desriptions of it, seems to focus on performance and whatnot. One of Firefox's big "selling points" are the inclusion of themes and add-ons. While Chrome seems to support these, I think tht Firefox will be regarded as the most customisable browser for a few months/years to come yet.

To whet your apetite i've found some Sreenshots here and there's also a Wikipedia Article about it.

If i'm honest, by looking at the screenshot i'm not keen on the GUI, but i'm probably being nitpicky there.

Looks nice if i'm honest - if its going to be available to all OS then i reckon they'll have different stylings slightly - it'll only appear on OS X if it conforms to the design of everything else, for example - otherwise it'll stick out like a sore thumb.

That's the thing. I don't like it when appliations stick out like a sore thumb and don't look similar to the rest of the GUI.

One of the reasons why I don't use iTunes that much and just tend to use WMP.

Meh.

Care, I do not.

I'll probably still use firefox more, tend to always try out new browsers though to see if there's anything outstanding about them.

Same. I've tried out Firefox, Opera and Safari, and i've just kept going back to Firefox. I liked Operas Mouse Gestures though.

i'd use opera outright if it could load all webpages without problems. it's faster to start up and seems to load pages faster. It's great being able to sync with versions on other PCs and even on my mobile.

Syncing bookmarks isn't that much of a big deal to me. When I was using Opera I didn't really come across problems with most websites that I visited. deviantArt didn't seem to want to upload images for some reason.

There is a Firefox add-on for that i think its called Firegestures 1.1.2

Word , I is runing Opera mini on my n95 8gb which is suprisigly fast

I'll check that out when I get home later.

the formatting buttons above the box i'm typing in now also don't work on Opera which really annoyed me, and the facebook chat bar is broken somewhat. I put it down to the designers of the websites really - most program in IE/firefox and tend to ignore opera as it's more of a niche browser

I'm looking forward to Chrome because:

- Each tab has its own process, when one webpage causes the browser problems it closes one tab, not all of them.

- Because each tab is a process of its own, when you shut the tab, there is no memory fragmentation, so hopefully memory leaks won't destroy browser performance

- Security is much better, the browser is given minimal rights, and can't destroy the OS. Any malicious code is only able to run in the browser tab in which it was started, so when you close it, viruses and malware are purged.

- Popups can't spawn out of a window. So adverts will only appear in the tab, and they will be contained in a small area of the screen. If you want the popup to open outside a tab you can manually move it.

- Better Javascript handling

There is plenty more to get excited about, but we'll see when it launches!

Well there's allegedly an announcement taking place 18:00 UTC, which means it started almost 15 minutes ago. I'm going to see what I can find out

Still can't find anything. I wonder what's taking them so long? It's 7pm over here...

I haven't read anything about Chrome yet (although they're copying the name of a Firefox sub-system there). However, there's a couple of YouTube channels that might throw something on the subject up in the next few days:

The Google Channel
Google Tech Talks
Google Developers

[Download Chrome Here] ~ Windows XP and Windows Vista only

Very small File Size.

Impressions:

Installation process is insanely quick. You pretty much just open up the set-up, it asks you if you want to import your settings, and you're on your way.

GUI is also pretty snazzy. It has a spell checker"out of the box". It's pretty fast too but I can't tell much of a difference in terms of speed between this and Firefox 3.

Downside? It doesn't quite render some pages properly, but in a Beta that's something that I expect. Cnet appears to load fine but some sites that i've been on already don't quite load properly.

Sending error reports are simple enough. Click on the Piece of Paper to the right of the address bar and click on "Report Bug or Broken Website", the rest is simple enough.

Also I think that the text in the address and navigation bar is too big. It looks a bit meh but i'm just being really nit picky here.

Overall it's pretty impressive. Especially since it's only in Beta.

At the moment I'm missing not having autoscroll as my mouse wheel is set to skip 6 lines per click so it usually zooms past what i wanted to see. It's very very quick - extremely impressed with it which is saying something for a first beta.

I've noticed they've taken aspects of Prism from firefox (it was an extension that allowed you to have a shortcut to a website (e.g. Google Mail) available on your desktop. They seem to have done a better job of it though

Note: don't close down your tab if there's only one at the top of the screen - it'll close the browser

I have downloaded Chrome on my Windows box because I feel the need to try these new things. 1st impressions, I don't think it will replace Firefox.

Firefox will remain my defult browser for now. But honestly with a few tweaks here and there it could become just as good as Firefox. My only real problem with it is that it has the same problems that Safari does when it comes to rendering web pages.

I shall hold off for quite sometime with this. I want to wait and see what the security is like. Mozilla are very good on security, which I then add to with extensions.

However, what interests me on a personal level with this is the following. One IE-only site I use is Tesco.com for groceries. When I'm using Linux, this means I need to install IE6 in Linux. So if there's a Linux version of Chrome, that will work with IE-only sites, then that would fill that gap.

That's just my totally selfish point of view. Otherwise, I'm kind of "meh" on this. While I would bet my life that Google is a far more philanthropic organisation than Apple is, I kind of view their ecosystem with a similar eye. Whatever OS you're using, you don't have to use the Google ecosystem, although if you do, you're totally dependant on them. This is why I actually avoid using Google services (although, I have just started using Google Reader for RSS feeds). So I'm definitely not going to jump at using a Google browser.

The other funny thing is, that Google give funding to the Mozilla foundation, so Chrome is a strange move. Perhaps they're looking to sideline Firefox?

Personally I think that if you merged Firefox and Chrome you'd have a pretty awesome browser. The flexibility and standards-compliancy of Firefox, combined with the stability of Chrome.

Personally I'm liking Chrome a lot. I think it's got potential to be a solid browser, but it's still very basic. It'll be a good parent-friendly browser.

What I find most interesting about the whole thing is that Mozilla gets almost 90% of its income from Google, and now Google's peddling its own browser, is Mozilla going to suffer?

Or, better still, will Mozilla and Google peddling their wares side-by-side to take down IE even more?

As much as it pains me to say so I don't think we're going to see Internet Explorer losing any significant market share any time soon.

For a start, Internet Explorer ships with Windows, which is the worlds most common Operating System. Chances are Joe Public has a machine running a version of Windows, and in turn, uses Internet Explorer.

The thing is, I don't think that people actually know that there are alternatives available. Unless you go looking for them by looking on Tech Sites or something then the chances of you coming across Firefox, Opera or Chrome are pretty slim.

I think that for web browsers to overtake Internet Explorer there needs to be a different approach taken to marketing. Get your browser in an article in the Newspapers, get an advert on TV, anything that Joe Public will just coincidentally run in to during day-to-day life.

Here's our hands-on with Chrome in Crave.