REM.FM Magazine Show
06.10.08

Chrome vs Internet Explorer 8

Google's announcement on September 2nd 2008 of a new web browser called Chrome, still in Beta, was a surprise.

With Chrome, Google is promising faster browsing, better security and compatibility across multiple operating systems. Google ultimately sees Chrome as the doorway for broader use of its Web-based applications, which threaten the desktop-based software that has traditionally been Microsoft's domain. 

Microsoft: The timing of the Chrome announcement sure spoiled the coming-out party for Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2; its release now seems like ancient history. And if Steve Ballmer and company care about whether Internet Explorer's declining market share dwindles even further, Chrome must be unnerving. Firefox's success has shown that a bunch of volunteers with a good browser can hammer away at a Microsoft monopoly that had seemed permanent. When the biggest Web company in the world comes along with a good browser, it might do far more damage.

Ultimately, though, Microsoft is surely less concerned about Chrome's potential impact on IE, a product it gives away for free, than on Windows, the one that's responsible for billions of dollars of profit each year. As many applications continue to migrate from desktop PCs onto the Web, plenty of buzz is advancing the idea that the center of gravity in software platforms is shifting from operating systems to browsers.  (visions of Cloud Computing)
And Google has openly stated that it aims to make Chrome into a great foundation for sophisticated Web applications that compete with desktop programs.

Google's streamlined and speedy browser offers strong integrated search and an intriguing alternative to Firefox and Internet Explorer.

The company has also taken a new approach to dealing with JavaScript, the coding language used to create more interactive Web pages and Web services. Google has created its own virtual machine for processing JavaScript faster. It means Web services such as Gmail will, in theory, work faster.

 

Chrome vs. IE 8

Google Chrome Beta 2 Beta 0.0
Google Cost: Free download
Platforms
Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008
Bottom Line

Google Chrome, Google’s Browser Project

• Google Chrome is Google’s open source browser project. As rumored before under the name of “Google Browser”, this will be based on the existing rendering engine Webkit. Furthermore, it will include Google’s Gears project.
• The browser will include a JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8, built from scratch by a team in Denmark, and open-sourced as well so other browsers could include it. One aim of V8 was to speed up JavaScript performance in the browser, as it’s such an important component on the web today. Google also say they’re using a “multi-process design” which they say means “a bit more memory up front” but over time also “less memory bloat.” When web pages or plug-ins do use a lot of memory, you can spot them in Chrome’s task manager, “placing blame where blame belongs.”
• Google Chrome will use special tabs. Instead of traditional tabs like those seen in Firefox, Chrome puts the tab buttons on the upper side of the window, not below the address bar.
  
  
• The browser has an address bar with auto-completion features. Called ’omnibox’, Google says it offers search suggestions, top pages you’ve visited, pages you didn’t visit but which are popular amd more. The omnibox (“omni” is a prefix meaning “all”, as in “omniscient” – “all-knowing”) also lets you enter e.g. “digital camera” if the title of the page you visited was “Canon Digital Camera”. Additionally, the omnibox lets you search a website of which it captured the search box; you need to type the site’s name into the address bar, like “amazon”, and then hit the tab key and enter your search keywords.
• As a default homepage Chrome presents you with a kind of “speed dial” feature, similar to the one of Opera. On that page you will see your most visited webpages as 9 screenshot thumbnails. To the side, you will also see a couple of your recent searches and your recently bookmarked pages, as well as recently closed tabs.
  
  
• Chrome has a privacy mode; Google says you can create an “incognito” window “and nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer.” The latest version of Internet Explorer calls this InPrivate. Google’s use-case for when you might want to use the “incognito” feature is e.g. to keep a surprise gift a secret. As far as Microsoft’s InPrivate mode is concerned, people also speculated it was a “porn mode.”
• Web apps can be launched in their own browser window without address bar and toolbar. Mozilla has a project called Prism that aims to do similar (though doing so may train users into accepting non-URL windows as safe or into ignoring the URL, which could increase the effectiveness of phishing attacks).
• To fight malware and phishing attempts, Chrome is constantly downloading lists of harmful sites. Google also promises that whatever runs in a tab is sandboxed so that it won’t affect your machine and can be safely closed. Plugins the user installed may escape this security model, Google admits.

This looks like a very interesting project, and I think it can’t hurt to have more competition in the browser area. Google is playing this as nicely as possible by open-sourcing things, with perhaps part of the reason to try to defend against monopoly accusations – after all, Google already owns a lot of what’s happening inside the browser, and some may feel owning a browser too could be a little too much power for a single company (Google could, for instance, release browser features that benefit their sites more than most other sites... as can Microsoft with Internet Explorer). For now, until Chrome is released in a testable version, how much of the speed, stability and user interface promises will be fullfilled – and how much of the interface you’ll be able to configure in case you don’t like it – remains to be seen.

 

Below a Chrome home page.