RSSChrome's objective: to speed up the Web for Google
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published September 2, 2008, 6:13 PM
As Google's lead developers for Chrome and its own co-founders made extremely clear in a press conference this afternoon, it's in the Web applications business, and it will do what's necessary to eliminate obstacles.
The Web is becoming a principal delivery mechanism for applications. But as such, it's only getting slower, and perhaps the biggest bottleneck is at the receiving end, with the Web browser itself.
So what better way to solve that problem, said Google co-founder Larry Page this afternoon in a press conference to announce the Chrome project, than to build a Web browser that kicks the browser into a higher gear? Though Chrome's very first public beta only went live at about 2:20 pm EDT today, by our estimates, Google's intent this afternoon was to publicly demonstrate an already radically reformed browser engine that could, quite feasibly, extend Google's ownership of the Web experience from content acquisition, through delivery, and into rendering.
"Remember, we're a Web company. We're writing a lot of apps on the Web, and if we can do that, say, ten times better than we're doing it now, we're going to make a lot more money," Page told a small, but packed, auditorium at Google's Mountain View headquarters this afternoon.
"We tend to find that, when we release products like this, people who use these products tend to use Google more," vice president for product management Sundar Pichai told reporters. "Other benefits include, with Chrome, our broader goal is to help drive the platform forward. That will help us write better applications. We've evolved from a search company into a 'search-as-an-apps' company, and so it'll help us write better applications, including Google Apps."
Among the multitude of developers Google paraded for reporters this afternoon was Lars Bak, a technical lead manager for the company and the principal developer of its V8 JavaScript engine. In a demonstration of a JavaScript app that draws a dynamic sprite orbiting a central point on a 2D plane, Bak showed that the application timed itself at an average of 7.5 revolutions per hour on Microsoft Internet Explorer 7. The same application, running on Chrome with V8, was timed at between 562 and 580 RPH, running on the same test system simultaneously. No, we didn't skip a decimal point; that's more than 76 times the speed of IE7's JavaScript VM in the same test.
"When JavaScript first came around, it was used to customize buttons and simplify things. It was only a few years [ago]," Bak remarked. "But already today, we have applications like Gmail where you actually download several hundred kilobytes of JavaScript code [that] you have to execute in order to navigate ground in Gmail. I guarantee you, this trend will continue. So we need something that will really take care of the future Web applications."
Today's conference prominently featured Chrome developers Ben Goodger -- a former lead Firefox developer who still remains listed as a contributor -- and Darin Fisher. Both were hired by Google over four years ago, although a great many Firefox contributors volunteer their time and resources while remaining employed by others.
"One of the driving goals [for Chrome] was to build a really streamlined user experience," stated Goodger, who leads Chrome's UI development team. "So when we sat down to do this, we thought, we'll go back to this original premise for Chrome, which is that it's a modern platform for Web pages and applications. So we thought [about] how this might impact the user interface.
"What we realized is, what we wanted to build was not so much a traditional content viewer, with the bulky toolbars and buttons and all that kind of stuff, but more of a streamlined thing, more of a window manager for Web pages and apps. So we developed a very streamlined user interface."
Chrome elevates the tab as a browsing element to an even higher level than that seen in Firefox. Here, the tab represents the page, and the address bar and search bar have been merged into a single control that appears beneath the tab. Each tab can be dragged independently of the Chrome workspace onto the desktop, but can then be dragged off of the desktop (assuming all these beta features eventually work right) and back into a collection of Chrome bookmarks.
The merging of the address bar with the search box (which only became a critical feature of Web browsers with IE6 and Firefox 2) betrays one of Google's key motives with this product. Like Firefox 3's smarter address bar, Chrome's single element -- which Google calls the Omnibox -- first attempts to parse an entry as a URL, then tries resolving it as a familiar term in its search history, and finally throws it to a search engine for resolution. By default, that search engine for Chrome's purposes is pretty obvious.
"It's a little bit psychic, there's a little bit of magic," remarked product manager Brian Rakowski, "in terms of predicting where you want to go. So we used to call it the 'psychic omnibox. In fact, our goal as a team was to only have to type one or two characters into the box before it gets you to where you want to go."
Rakowski's demonstration of Chrome's omnibox was not all that different from Firefox 3, except that this box mixes clearly marked Google search suggestions with known URLs. As he typed "A," for instance, the omnibox offered to take him to Amazon.com.
But one element that truly does distinguish the omnibox from Chrome's competition, at least for now, involves discerning automatically when any Web site has its own search box, regardless of whether it uses its own provider or engine. Once the Chrome user has visited a site and has conducted a search on its built-in engine, Chrome should be able to recognize that site as search capable, and integrate a link to that site's built-in search automatically to the omnibar. (This is a feature we're still trying to get to work right in BetaNews' tests, although this is the earliest public beta.)
Another automatic Chrome feature the team demonstrated is the ability to detect when a Web application may be run independently of a browser tab. Chrome can run such an application as though it were installed separately on the user's computer, outside of a tab and in its own private workspace, without any of the visual trappings of a Web browser.
Next: What about that other open source browser?...
I dunno...I like the colors and yes it is quite responsive. It does have away to go before it can get near IE7 or Firefox for that matter. But as I always say of beta software, keep tinkering till you get it right. :)
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This new Google Chrome is all well and good except for a couple of things I discovered. First and foremost, why do I now have three Chrome processes running in my task manager? I'm sitting here listening to my hard drive spin away. Task manager shows it's using a fair amount of memory although I Really don't see enough CPU Usage to concern me. For a minute though, I thought I was in a Flash environment.
They other thing that I don't care for is there in no spell checker with Chrome as there is with firefox and I'm not sure about IE7.
When I'm typing something like in this forum, it underlines the error in red but gives you no way to correct your spelling.
Wow, My HDD just finally shut up,lol
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First and foremost, why do I now have three Chrome processes running in my task manager?
Chrome runs each tab/instance in a separate process. At startup it *will* use more RAM than FF/Opera, but after a few hours of use, it will be using *hundreds* less.
They other thing that I don't care for is there in no spell checker with Chrome as there is with firefox and I'm not sure about IE7.
I can only assume this is another flaky feature that works for some and not others. I have it, and it flags misspelled words. Sometimes, it even lets me right-click to correct them (though most of the time that option mysteriously doesn't pop up).
Chalk it up as a BETA issue.
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From the user perspective, it simply doesn't bring anything compelling to the table at this time to justify a switch.
Also keep in mind that they gather usage statistics on everything that you enter into the address bar unless you disable the feature.
http://gears.google.com/...me/intl/en/privacy.html
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"In the open source world, it's technically not supposed to be possible to steal someone else's ideas."
Just what is this generalized statement supposed to mean? I'm sure some Open Source authors would disagree with you here.
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"But in a race to catch up in the browser wars, despite all of Google's warm and open language, the company was very successful today in making the "3" beside the word "Firefox" appear to mean something else."
Could anyone enlighten me on this? Thanks.
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1) Internet Explorer
2) Chrome
3) Mozilla Firefox
???
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Firefox free. ;)
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At first glance, the new JS engine in Chrome is much faster than FireFox and much, much faster than IE. Google Apps is a lot more responsive than in FF or IE.
The Google Apps suite (and SaS in general) is still in its infancy and will gain acceptance in time. How can you beat $50/month/user for Premier Edition?
Check out this free online video Google Apps: Quick Tour (from Google) for details on Google Apps.
http://sohotrends.tradep...;_t=oc:&pc=w_goog02
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I wonder how many year this will be in beta, along with everything they have in beta. Even so, I don't want or need Google poking their nose into my surfing habits anymore than they do now. Allowing their browser on my system is just an opportunity to steal my computing habits as well...all in the name of targeting advertisements. No thanks. Not only do I never click on advertisements, I go to great lengths to block them. I get the feeling such things would be difficult to do in a Google built browser. I'll stay with FF and AdBlock. :-)
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Even if Adblocker connects directly to Google Database?
If Database of AdBlocks are controlled by an Ad-company - weird for me.
Just for that reason I don´t use FF3 Adblock. There are a lot of alternatives, not made and connected to Google.
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That's a good point concerning the ad blocking features... best concern posted here IMHO. I don't use ad block because I actually find ads useful as I manage marketing campaigns -- but if I didn't -- I'd go for an ad free Internet and yeah, I would be shocked if Chrome blocked them.
And wow ... yeah, Chrome is a good idea in order to dilute the market a bit more away from browsers with ad blocking ... if they can take away 1.5% of Firefox's market, that equates to a lot of money on pay per click ads that could potentially be blocked ... small numbers that might have a meaningful value over time and with wide distribution.
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http://www.sfu.ca/~cyrille/news/CFM.gif that is a big deal
You are wasting your life away using IE.
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cant wait to see how Firefox 3.1's improved JS engine will compete :)
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great well the day i need to do a million if statements or a million additions in a row ill try it.
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You tested in IE 6. I gave it a run in IE 7. I avg 536ms, but it stumbled through those tests.
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Uh...so you're comparing a browser that was released today, with the newest Firefox 3 browser...and IE6 which is more then a few years old rather then the current IE7? Uh...yea, that's a fair comparison...
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i have tried for 3 hours to download chrome
and it is not working with my vista i downloaded on firefox and explorer, it never gets past downloads
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Cool features. We do need innovation in web arena. I congratulate Google on leading this effort.
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Tried disabling UAC?
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*Laughing*
You're so silly...
The chrome install doesn't even tick UAC. It's actually coded and designed not to. Ya know, the way any app for Vista should be coded.
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You're running the most bloated and buggy OS imaginable. What else were you expecting?
Throw that glorified typewriter in the trash and get a Mac.
http://www.apple.com/getamac
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Download it from the Google site.
I had the same problem last night when downloading it on my home system from FileForum.
The download would complete, but never run.
I went to Google's download page for it and it worked like a champ.
FileForum's download is ... challenged.
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Fully installing it's files to the user's AppData folder ? That's not my idea of how things should be.
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Get yourself hired by MSFT and perhaps you can have some say in that.
Personally, I really do not know *why* they are pushing people form the "program files" folder, but I do firmly believe, when it comes to things like that, they've done a *hell* of a lot more research than I have...
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Well good luck~
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