RSSChrome's objective: to speed up the Web for Google
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published September 2, 2008, 6:13 PM
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If these and other new Chrome features seem strangely familiar, you may be a Mozilla Labs contributor. The desire to endow the address bar with greater functionality is the inspiration behind Mozilla Labs' Ubiquity project, which it officially launched only last week. Chrome's decision to endow the default "New Tab" page with thumbnails of frequented Web sites, rather than blank area, seems oddly parallel with Aza Raskin's "Conceptual New-Tab Actions" project, which he kicked off -- again, just last week -- with this note: "Right now, when you open a new tab, you get a blank screen. While clean, it has a 100% probability of not getting you where what you want to be."
The ability to run Web browser-driven JavaScript apps as independent programs on the desktop, is the subject of Mozilla Labs' Prism project, launched last year. And while Firefox 3 was at one time destined to be the home of the organization's latest JavaScript engine, just a little over a week ago, developer Brendan Eich announced TraceMonkey was coming for Firefox 3.1, with possible double-digit performance improvements across the board, if not triple-digit in some categories.
Chrome's "Incognito" feature, which opens separate browser windows with their own tab rows for sessions the user does not want permanently recorded, resembles someone else's major project: Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8, with its InPrivate feature. Curiously, IE8 Beta 2 was also released last week.
In the open source world, it's technically not supposed to be possible to steal someone else's ideas. However, when you take into account the fact that the Chrome project (which has also gone by the name "Chromium") may have started over four years ago, the question becomes, just who would have stolen their ideas from whom?
Today, Mozilla tried to maintain the most altruistic attitude it possibly could, seeing as how Google remains perhaps the organization's single biggest source of revenue.
"It should come as no real surprise that Google has done something here -- their business is the web, and they've got clear opinions on how things should be, and smart people thinking about how to make things better," wrote Mozilla CEO John Lilly in a blog post this afternoon. "Chrome will be a browser optimized for the things that they see as important, and it'll be interesting to see how it evolves."
As far as how Chrome impacts Firefox development going forward, Lilly added, "As much as anything else, it'll mean there's another interesting browser that users can choose. With IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc., there's been competition for a while now, and this increases that. So it means that more than ever, we need to build software that people care about and love. Firefox is good now, and will keep on getting better."
Mozilla chairman Mitchell Baker's blog post this afternoon was far more introspective and cerebral, only mentioning Google and Chrome in its title. Baker's most poignant comment was this: "Competition is seldom comfortable, but it forces us to do our best."
"We really, as computer scientists, want to live in a world where the platforms are really advancing," stated Google's Larry Page, who took a similarly altruistic viewpoint, "where they can be improved, where people can add new functionality, where the pace of change and improvement's really rapid. We don't want to live in a world where all that's locked up and kept secret, and nobody can improve it. The open source model has really allowed people to do that. It allows any developer in the world anywhere, who's connected to the Internet, [to] make an improvement to an open source project like Chrome, and that can really make the world a lot better. It also means that other projects, like Mozilla and so on, can take some of the advancements we've made and the hard work that's been done on things like V8, and they could actually choose to incorporate those things pretty easily, potentially."
Sundar Pichai's explanation was more direct: "We've always believed in extending other browsers. We contribute a lot to other open source projects, including Firefox. We have built toolbars to extend other browsers. In the case of Chrome, we saw an opportunity, given how much the Web has evolved -- a chance to rewrite the browser from scratch. So it's not something you can layer onto existing browsers, and we did not want to impose our views on anyone else. Our goal here was to bring our point of view, but do it in a very open way, so that we can provide more choice for users, but at the same time, the whole of the community can benefit from it."
Co-founder Sergey Brin, however, was the most poignant of all. "It's probably worth noting that they're across the street," he said, "and they're over here all the time for lunch. We have a great collaboration with the Mozilla team, we've talked with them about lots of Chrome things, lots of browser things. I hope that big chunks of Chrome can make it into next generations of Firefox."
If Mozilla Labs' projects pick up steam, that may indeed become possible. 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.
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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