Switch to fluid Switch to wfix Switch to fixed

Google Chrome already beating Opera

Posted by Vincent Yeoh on 9-7-2008

google-chrome-browser

google-chrome-browser

Maybe Google really does have something here — in just two days, they have leapfrogged Opera in market share, and have their eyes set on bigger fish. I would have thought that Google’s foray into the browser market would have taken a bit more time to develop, but it seems that adoption has been extremely rapid. According to TechCrunch, most users are coming from Internet Explorer, not Firefox.

Microsoft must be worried, or at least they should be — imagine how embarrassing it would be if Google begins to dominate IE in short order, and Microsoft continues to lose search market share regardless how hard they try.

I would be interested in hearing your honest opinion on Chrome — personally, I have made the switch, and I am definitely not looking back. It’s everything I need, and nothing I don’t. It’s so important for newly launched services and applications leave a good taste in the mouths of early adopters — unfortunately, that is usually an extremely hard thing to accomplish.

Garett Rogers is employed as a programmer for iQmetrix, which specializes in retail management software for the cellular and electronics industry. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

—————

A fresh take on the browser

At Google, we spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And like all of you, in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends - all using a browser. People are spending an increasing amount of time online, and they’re doing things never imagined when the web first appeared about 15 years ago.

Since we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if you started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.

So today we’re releasing the beta version of a new open source browser: Google Chrome.

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. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

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 improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built V8, a more powerful JavaScript engine, to power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers.

This is just the beginning - Google Chrome is far from done. We’ve released this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We’re hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and we’ll continue to make it even faster and more robust.

We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we’re committed to continuing on their path. We’ve used components from Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox, among others - and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.

The web gets better with more options and innovation. Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to making the web even better.

But enough from us. The best test of Google Chrome is to try it yourself.

Download

Share/Save/Bookmark

Add A Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.