Update: Google announces Chrome, a new web browser
Tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/5v83uh
Update: Download now live at http://www.google.com/chrome
Google’s blog revealed today that the company is about to launch a new web browser tomorrow in over a 100 countries. The browser, called Google Chrome, will be launched in public beta on Windows first. The browser will be made available for MacOS X and Linux in the future.
So why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.
Google claims that the browser has a list of compelling enhancements when compared with current browsers in the market: Apple’s Safari which is based on WebKit, Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Some of the Chrome enhancements revealed today include
- Tabbed browsing with each tab as an isolated “sandbox” to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites.
- Improved speed and responsiveness
- A more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers.
Google chrome uses components from Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox, among others and the company plans to open source the code.
The obvious question here is why another browser? Unless Chrome turns out to be radically better, the company may be accused of fragmenting the open source community that’s currently behind Firefox. Whatever the reasons may be, tomorrow’s release should provide for an interesting evaluation on how Chrome compares to the likes of Safari, Firefox and IE. We will keep our readers posted after our Chrome test drive!
