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Google Chrome, the Google Browser
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Sep 01, 2008 12:09 PM
from the fun-unfounded-rumor dept.
from the fun-unfounded-rumor dept.
Philipp Lenssen writes "Google announced their very own browser project called Google Chrome — an announcement in the form of a comic book drawn by Scott McCloud, no less. Google says Google Chrome will be open source, include a new JavaScript virtual machine, include the Google Gears add-on by default, and put the tabs above the address bar (not below), among other things. I've also uploaded Google's comic book with all the details (details given from Google's perspective, anyway... let's see how this holds up). While Google provided the URL www.google.com/chrome there's nothing up there yet."
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Mozilla's Thoughts On Google's Chrome 604 comments
tandiond writes to tell us that in a recent blog posting, Mozilla CEO John Lily shared his thoughts on Google's new browser project, Chrome, and what that means for Mozilla. "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. Chrome will be a browser optimized for the things that they see as important, and it'll be interesting to see how it evolves." Mozilla's Europe president, Tristan Nitot also chimed in during an interview with PCPro, stating that they don't view this as a direct attack on Firefox, even if it did catch them by surprise. "I'll take another example: just before Microsoft launched Vista, it invited us [to work with it] so that Firefox works better on Windows Vista. Because for it, Firefox being a top-tier application that was very successful - we now have 200 million users around the world - it could not afford to have Firefox run slowly on Vista. Therefore, it helped us improve Firefox for Vista. That's just the same for Google. It wants Firefox to perform well with its applications, that's for sure. Indeed, it even wants IE to perform well with Gmail and the rest. It's just that it has very limited control over this. That's why Google's been frustrated and it is launching this Chrome browser."
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Your Rights Online: Reading Google Chrome's Fine Print 607 comments
Much ink and many electrons are being spilled over Google's Chrome browser (discussed here twice in recent days): from deep backgrounders to performance benchmarks to its vulnerability to a carpet-bombing flaw. The latest angle to be explored is Chrome's end-user license agreement. It does not look consumer-friendly. "By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services."
[+]
Google Chrome, Day 2 1016 comments
Seems that almost every story submitted to Slashdot last night in some way involved Google's Chrome that we started talking about yesterday. Dotan Cohen noted that according to Clicky Chrome has hit 3% browser share. Since Google has decided to release Chrome only for Windows, I now share for you 3 reviews written by others: the first comes from alexy2k, the second from mildsiete, and the third from oli4uk. They all seem to feature various opinions, charts, and screenshots demonstrating various exciting points.
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Google Claims User Content In Multiple Products 166 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Google last week removed some language in its Chrome browser's terms of service that gave the company a license to any material displayed in the browser, but that language remains in several other Google products, including its Picasa photo service and its Blogger service."
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Google's Chrome Declining In Popularity 489 comments
holy_calamity writes "After launching in a blaze of publicity that even warmed Slashdot, Google's browser grabbed a 3% share of the market, but has been slipping ever since, and now accounts for 1.5%. Google has also stopped promoting the browser on its search page. Assuming they wanted it to grab a significant share of the browser market, have they dropped the ball, or is this part of the plan?" On Slashdot, Chrome is still the #4 browser (after FF, IE, and Safari) but it was ahead of Safari for a few days, hitting almost 10% of our traffic.
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Very Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
I imagine the first question on everyone's mind will be, "Why do we need a new web browser?" To which I imagine the truthful answer is: "We don't. At least not for technical reasons."
I believe what Google is looking to accomplish is to trade on their brand name in an attempt to further dislodge Internet Explorer.
Remember when AOL purchased Netscape? AOL didn't care about the browser in the slightest. They wanted Netscape for the brand name. To the vast majority of users, Netscape was the Internet.
Google has since taken that place. Google is the Internet to many people. So much so that Google has felt compelled to to prevent the genericizing [independent.co.uk] of their mark.
In this particular case, however, the strength of their mark works to Google's advantage. They have already convinced millions of users to install their desktop software. If they can further convince millions of users to install and use their browser, they can cause enough of a disruption to finally remove IE's leadership in the browser market. Especially given the solid work already done by FireFox, Opera, and Safari. With only another 10% marketshare loss on the whole, even the most stubborn websites will be forced to support third party browsers. And once they support third party browser, it will be very little time before the technological superiority of the alternative browsers causes them to add special features not available for Internet Explorer users.
It will be Netscape vs. Internet Explorer all over again. Except that instead of two giants fighting it out, it will be Microsoft against everyone else. And when everyone else happens to be giants in their own right, Microsoft's prospects will start looking rather grim.
In effect, this move is a blow aimed squarly at Redmond. Not for the purposes of truth, justice, and the freedom of all mankind; as I'm sure many will imagine. Rather, for the purpose of hitting back at Microsoft for their attempts to leverage their monopoly in promoting MSN Search over Google. The only difference is that Google Search is a good product and it is entrenched. Internet Explorer hasn't been a good product since Microsoft stopped developing it nearly 8 years ago (piss-poor upgrades pretending to be standards-compliant not withstanding), and its entrenchments are slowly falling to competition.
Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
To the vast majority of users, Netscape was the Internet.
Google has since taken that place. Google is the Internet to many people. So much so that Google has felt compelled to to prevent the genericizing [independent.co.uk] of their mark.
Well I'd better do some googling to find out about that.
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
To take advantage of the forefront in "tabs at the top" technology, of course. I am personally very excited that science has progressed to the point where we can now have tabs above the address bar.
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you're being snarky, but if you actually think about it, the address bar really *does* belong under the tab bar.
The address is a property of the current page. Placing it above the tabs puts it into the same space as the persistent elements like the file/edit menus. Those are application-wide. Below the tabs puts it into the same space as the page content, which makes sense as it isn't an application-wide property, but is directly related to the selected tab.
I'd never thought about it before, and can't say I'm bothered with the current setup (address above the tabs) but there is a sense to it.
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that I care, but maybe the "user" perceives the content of tabs & current page as more related while not being aware of the address of the current page at all.
CC.
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
I'll contact HR and have them run a survey for ya
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Judging by the rest of your post, what you really mean is that the address bar does belong with the page. But so do tabs. The active tab is directly connected with the page that's displayed.
Since both the address bar and the tabs both can't be right above the page proper, another solution is then to place either the tabs or the address bar below the page. Yes, below it. Or place the tabs at the side, like most normal books with tabs.
Personally, I'd like to see the address bar at the bottom, which fits with the GUI paradigm of a shell, where your input is always at the bottom, or instant messaging programs, where the input is at the bottom, or line editors, where -- you catch my drift.
But people are easily confused, and probably too used to the URL field being at the top, so it might be better to place the tabs at the bottom (or the sides).
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
You've never used Opera have you?
Default look is tabs (well, more like mini windows unlike binder tabs) over the adress bar. =/
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
And there's more:
They've taken IE's disgusting perverted porn mode idea that only perverts would use, and put it in their own browser so now you can use it to keep your wholesome family activity like buying surprise gifts for your loving husband or your precious children, a delightful little secret for now. Finally, a browser for good-old fashioned God fearing Americans like you and me. Gosh, those perverts at Microsoft, a porn mode! Who would imagine such a thing...
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's true. My dad refers to the *entire internet* as Google. Sigh.
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually the question on my mind is what's going to happen to Mozilla? As I remember, they get most of their backing from Google generously paying for the traffic they get from Mozilla's search plugin. If Google cancels that deal (and they very well might, if they have a competing browser), Mozilla will lose most of its cash-flow very suddenly.
So with fierce competition from webkit and Opera and a lot less money all of a sudden, and a browser from Google that does anything just as well as FF does it and a few things better, Mozilla may be left struggling. This may not be such a terrible thing, Mozilla grew from nothing, it could be an important lesson to go back there, but they may not survive going from being one of the best funded web browsers to one of the worst funded web browsers in just a few months.
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
Google doesn't pay Mozilla because they like firefox. They pay because Mozilla drives millions of hits to Google's search engine. As long as firefox is doing that, Google will pay (although, I'm sure they will only freely advertise their own browser now).
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's certainly true to a point; however, rigging up a monetized Google Custom Search is all of five minutes work. The behavior to a search at google.com is a tiny bit different (you can also weight the results with keywords; I find this quite helpful for my development work), but the biggest change for them would be that they'd have to change the default home page from google.com/mozillasearch to mozilla.com/googlesearch, and the search box accordingly.
Do know that the Google search isn't anything near their only source of funding. The Amazon search in that top-right search box is an Amazon Affiliate search - tag=mozilla-20 gets added into your Amazon search URL, and they get a minimum of 4% of the purchase price provided you went through their affiliate link last (I don't see why people gripe about this kind of thing so often, it only costs Amazon money, not the purchaser). With the volume that probably does, it's more like 6-8% on most items.
I'm sure that there are plenty of other sources of income for Mozilla, though I'd expect those are the biggest two. And both are structured in such a way that they'd have to be personally blocked from using the affiliate program (unlikely, especially given the bad press), or the program itself would have to be shut down entirely (even more unlikely, as half the internet gets its funding from these things).
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article:
One aim of V8 was to speed up JavaScript performance in the browser, as it's such an important component on the web today.
This is probably one of the main reasons they've done it. They've been trying to push applications on the web, and the speed hasn't been completely impressive. With faster JavaScript execution, their products are much more viable.
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Safari, FireFox, and Opera (in that order) have been showing marked improvements in Javascript performance. To the point where Javascript performance is a major point of competition. Microsoft's JScript engine is currently the slowest Javascript engine on the browser market. (As I can personally attest after running sophisticated sorting algorithms through it.) So the problem still comes back to Internet Explorer.
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm only 9 pages into the comic but the fact that every tab and plugin will run as a separate process seems significant to me and something more than just a rebranding.
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
Well how else you think Schroedinbugs [catb.org] can exist? Microsoft is way ahead of Open Source world on this one.
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hopefully, that means that Konqueror will be added to the official list of "supported" browsers then.
I really dislike having to use Firefox / Iceweasel to clear my spam folder. (Agent spoofing gives me the interface, but when I try to click on anything, I get stuck in a page loading loop. Either that or the whole page highlights itself and I can't chose anything.)
I know I can manually delete spam, page by page, with the html interface, but when you have +1000 spams, that gets tedious, fast.
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
Does that mean that their relationship with Mozilla will be ending?
Google recently renewed their monetary agreement with Mozilla [betanews.com] for 3 more years.
So, no, it seems their relationship remains strong. Google Chrome sounds like a very cool project, but I'm thinking that it'll be more of an experiment than an actual product, just like most things Google make.
Also, I doubt Mozilla would have a hard time finding funding even if Google pulls the plug on them.
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
Firefox isn't the only browser funded primarily by Google; Opera is as well.
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:4, Informative)
Read the cartoon. You'll find a lot of interesting ideas there. It doesn't sound at all like Firefox with a few default extensions and a custom theme.
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
When I read the comic I seemed to think it looked completely different to Firefox, new process for each tab/plugin/script, new Javascript VM... I suppose they're similar in the fact that they both render web pages, have tabs and extensions, but every browser has those, and that's where the similarities end.
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Re:Very Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess they will make it seamless to the point you can click an icon and get a remote application launched (without having to open the browser at any time). As for having a beta version released soon, I really doubt Google would release the comic and show their plans to its competitors (mainly Microsoft) if they hadn't something to show very soon.
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Ha! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Informative)
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IBM also announced a new browser! (Score:5, Funny)
it's called unsubstantiated and is located here: www.ibm.com/unsubstantiated
Dunno why the page appears to be down though?
It's the homepage (Score:5, Insightful)
These days, there isn't much to differentiate between browsers as far as end-users are concerned. A "smart homepage" is a very effective way of capturing a user's interest, providing significant convenience, and making it less likely for them to switch away. Opera have started down this road with their speed dial feature, but Google seem to be taking it a big step further. Google have tried this once before, with iGoogle [google.com], but building it into the browser means they can incorporate things like surfing history and bookmarks to determine which websites are most important to a user without needing manual configuration in the same way an online homepage would.
Now they can monitor everything you do easier (Score:4, Insightful)
Now they can monitor everything you do easier...
Google is a marketing company, and in the past has used nefarious ad tracking to even Firefox searches reporting information to the Google servers.
Now they want a browser? Why? What reason would they need for a new browser?
So instead of putting full support behind a 'generic' Firefox, they want to enter the market so they can gather even more information from the user.
Nice... Geesh
Sadly they will get some of the Dell and other bundling deals, because they can afford to pay these companies to put this browser on machines, and most users won't know what is going on behind, even if the tech community finds Google doing the most nefarious things possible with the browser.
This type of concern makes the IE8 privacy mode and blocking sites from tracking users the 'non-evil' choice.
What was Google's ad hoc motto again, and was it just words after all?
Re:Now they can monitor everything you do easier (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Now they can monitor everything you do easier (Score:5, Insightful)
It's open source. I'm sure a project of this magnitude will get lots of looking eyes. Good resource pool for Google to spot talent too.
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google's relationship with mozilla? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:google's relationship with mozilla? (Score:5, Informative)
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I just uncovered some hidden subtitles (Score:5, Funny)
Just when you thought Google wasn't going to get any cooler, we try desperately to prove you wrong.
Don't worry, it won't be out of Beta until IE 10.
Now with Omni Bar, the omniscient Awesome Bar
Just when you thought data mining couldn't get any closer to home
OK, in all seriousness I think it's nice to see another Webkit based browser around. I'm personally waiting to see the Epiphany team's Webkit based browser. Hopefully, Google's Chrome project will spur some innovations that the Firefox/Safari/Opera/IE competition has failed to supply. Maybe the JS engine will prove it's worth as well, speedups in this area are always nice.
Mozilla? (Score:4, Insightful)
What does this mean for Mozilla, which currently gets most of its financial support from Google? If Google has their own browser which competes against Firefox, will they be inclined to reduce their support of Firefox?
If not, it means Google will be paying for two competitors to Internet Explorer. I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft complains about unfair competition.
In any event, if Google's aim is to further drive people away from IE, they'll have to spend some cash on advertising. Their target is people who are already familiar with Google's brand name, but believe the blue "e" is "how you get to Google." Some of these people launch IE and type "www.google.com" into the address bar every time they want to search for something, because their home page is set to MSN and they are unaware that it can be changed (or that other sites can be bookmarked), let alone know how to do so.
Excellent - I can't wait! (Score:5, Funny)
What would really impress me... (Score:5, Funny)
would be an *online browser*. Like Google docs. Imagine just how great it would be not to need a browser to go online. History, cookies, bookmarks, all stored on Google servers. Plus it would be incredibly fast since the internet is already on Google servers!
Also that would be very convenient for Google, they could access our private information locally on their servers, no need to "call home". Hell they could even check with our e-bank statements to see how much money we can spend so they could offer really well-targeted ads.
That would be huge. All they need for me to sign up is to throw in some features involving blogs, mashups and Spacebook.
Ex-Firefox developers (Score:5, Interesting)
Did anyone else notice the number of current or former Firefox developers name-checked in that comic? Ben Goodger was the Firefox project lead until recently. The most significant part of this news may be that Google is pulling people off Firefox development (assuming they were contributing to Firefox while working there) and getting them to write a new browser. Still, Firefox is working pretty well and their financial future is secure for the next few years - thanks to wads of cash from Google - so we need not be too worried.
Apart from that, my verdict is 'show us the code'. Announcements of future plans and vapourware are not really interesting, even when it's Google.
Designing browser as if it were an OS (Score:5, Interesting)
Based on Page 4 [blogoscoped.com], Google is designing the browser as if it were an operating system. This is something that I commented on previously in the discussion of Microsoft's approach to IE8 [slashdot.org]. Going from shared memory to protected memory was a big step for multitasking on the desktop, and since web applications are more and more complex, the same move needs to be made with browser design.
If IE8 and "Google Chrome" are moving in this direction, what will we see from Safari and Firefox? Safari 4 betas give no indication of a fundamental re-architecting. Firefox 4 is still at least a year away, and so far no one in that community has been publicly talking about this kind of redesign. And Opera... who knows?
Google's own implementation of Flash (Score:5, Insightful)
Where's Belgium? (Score:5, Funny)
Weird because the rest of the chart seems pretty correct.
This must mean all of Google are Nazi's.
Re:404?!?!? (Score:5, Informative)
I believe you're confused as to what "404 Not Found" means. It means the page you're looking for isn't there, not that the server is overloaded or can't handle the request. It's not slashdotted.
However, this is not Google's normal 404 page. They've definitely configured www.google.com/chrome differently than the rest of the site, so they're obviously planning to put something there.
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Re:404?!?!? (Score:5, Informative)
If you think Google's www.google.com address just goes to one server that picks out different content by file name, you're in for a surprise. Try the http://www.google.com/chrome [google.com] address and the http://www.google.com/chrome1 [google.com] address with a tool that lets you look at the HTTP headers. Look at the "Server" header. Different server code. Google runs a high performance, massively load balanced, widely geographically distributed, HTTP front end that figures out what server to pass things to based on the URI part of the URL. They don't need to do separate hostnames (although they can still do that, too, such as http://maps.google.com/ [google.com] and http://mail.google.com/ [google.com]).
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Re:404?!?!? (Score:5, Funny)
Can't stay on task long enough to read a Slashdot summary ? Better up your Ritalin dose.
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Re:Webkit (Score:4, Informative)
Apple chose [kde.org] KHTML as the foundation of WebKit for the size and quality of the codebase compared with Gecko, despite having Gecko experts working on the project. It makes sense that others would choose WebKit for the same reasons.
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Re:Webkit (Score:5, Funny)
So will Google add ad filtering capabilities?
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translation... (Score:4, Insightful)
Translation
"I own Microsoft stock options and I'm unhappy". [yahoo.com]
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Re:Uh, Memory Leaks (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, the opposite should be true. Memory won't "leak" from tab to tab. When the tab gets closed, it's memory gets returned to the OS pool by hook or by crook. Only the UI itself should leak memory over the lifetime of the browser.
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