7 ms·

Google Chrome, Google's Browser Project

173 points by nickb 18y ago

ryanmahoski 18y ago
Windows only. No Mac, no Linux.
- pqs 18y ago
  In the post in the official google blog they said that they are also preparing versions for linux and osx. This makes sense, as they want everybody to be able to use the webabs of the future.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
mixmax 18y ago
So soon we'll have yet another browser to check for compatibility issues in CSS and javascript. Great.
- cookiecaper 18y ago
  Well, assuming it uses a pristine WebKit backend, you should only have to test in one browser with the same WebKit build. :) I guess that might be idealistic thinking, but hopefully it pans out.
  - meat-eater 18y ago
    They seem to be using their own javascript engine, so it might need separate testing because of that. Although if it becomes popular enough, most javascript libraries and frameworks will surely support it.
    - tlrobinson 18y ago
      There are actually very few inconsistencies in browsers implementations of the JavaScript language, it's the DOM that's the problem. If all they're doing is swapping out the engine for a JavaScript 1.5+ compatible engine, then we should be fine.
    - mpk 18y ago
      You can bet they will. The V8 engine is unlikely to present much of an obstacle. We have a large JS codebase and the Opera, WebKit (Safari), Spidermonkey (Gecko/Firebird), Rhino (Spidermonkey port to Java) and JScript (IE6/7) engines are no hassle to support. The hard part is DOM interaction and styling. But as they're using WebKit and are putting a lot of effort into compatibility - this should be a breeze. The really hard work is support for IE6. 1990s JS assumptions, very bad and inconsistent DOM behaviour, etc. New, open JS engines with a different take on executing JS (Tamarin, V8) are wonderful news for JS developers everywhere. And consumers too, of course.
      - morbidkk 18y ago
        any link to V8 project? Comic strip says its just a module in Chrome and can be used extensively for other projects i.e. that means games/cool desktop/mobile apps
      - bOR_ 18y ago
        I know the portion of IE6 on the web is still around 25%.. but do you know what portion of your customers is actually using IE6 still? I wonder at what point it is justified to return a 'please update your browser, preferrably to one of these: [list of reasonable browsers]', just because of the effort it takes you to keep IE6 compatibility.
        jmtulloss 18y ago
        At a small startup with a huge and complicated JS base, we've done just that. There's no way we can justify the man hours required to support IE6.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
- pistoriusp 18y ago
  Also google might have more push than Mozilla to get it installed on all of those machines running IE6.
sh1mmer 18y ago
I don't see the need for Google to try and compete in a space where there is already plenty of competition and Open Source innovation. Maybe they are tired of giving Mozilla Corp Ad Words money for Firefox searches.
- neilk 18y ago
  They just renewed the contract with Mozilla. That's got nothing to do with it. And there's not nearly enough competition in browsers. Sure, there are lots of projects, but few of them are serious contenders for the average Windows user -- maybe Opera and Firefox qualify, but that's about it. If you've ever tried to write a complex web app you immediately bang your head against the low, low ceiling afforded by the browser. Google knows this as well as anybody and it impedes adoption of Google apps like Gmail or Docs. Making the browser into a better platform is good for their business -- note they are giving away their spiffy new JS engine and the whole thing is open source. If Firefox adopted their innovations tomorrow or one-upped them, I'm sure the Chrome team would be very happy.
  - wayne 18y ago
    Plus, a little less altruistically, it lets Google embed stuff like Google Gears and Google Toolbar directly into the browser, set Google.com as the browser homepage, and add a bunch of buttons linking to various Google services. Companies like Google pay a lot for defaults like that. Plus, like Apple, they've got a mobile platform now so maybe they'll use some subset of Chrome in Android.
- Hexstream 18y ago
  And did you see the need for Google to try and compete in the search engine space when there was already plenty of competition?
dabeeeenster 18y ago
Anyone got a mirror? It's crawling...
- haasted 18y ago
  The graphic presentation is accessible through http://blogoscoped.com.nyud.net/google-chrome/ http://blogoscoped.com.nyud.net/google-chrome/ .
  - johnyzee 18y ago
    That is a badass presentation. I wouldn't have read 10% of that information had it been delivered as paragraphs of text.
    - mechanical_fish 18y ago
      It's brilliant design work. Favorite thing I've noticed so far: The trick of managing to introduce N different members of the design team, and give you an idea of what each one is working on, during the presentation by having each one deliver five lines and then hand over to the next. This trick would never, ever work in a screencast or a movie -- even if every individual had the acting chops to pull it off, it would feel like a circus act. But in comics, it works, because the comic characters are sufficiently abstract that they can take over from each other, almost mid-sentence, without a jarring discontinuity. I swear that reading McCloud is almost enough to send me to art school.
      - william42 18y ago
        Hell, just set up some webspace and try to start a webcomic, and you can probably learn basic art skills "on the job" as it were.
- neilk 18y ago
  pdf, courtesy Brian Enigma: http://brevity.org/pic/chrome/Google_on_Google_Chrome.pdf http://brevity.org/pic/chrome/Google_on_Google_Chrome.pdf zip of pngs: http://brevity.org/pic/chrome/google-chrome-mccloud-comic.zip http://brevity.org/pic/chrome/google-chrome-mccloud-comic.zi... or, all in individual png files: http://brevity.org/pic/chrome/ http://brevity.org/pic/chrome/
cookiecaper 18y ago
This is cool and all, but did they have to choose "Chrome" for the name? No reason to do that other than to cause confusion, I think.
- jeffgreco 18y ago
  Strikes me as a very catchy name for the typical user, who most likely doesn't have "browser chrome" in their vocabulary already. And I doubt it'll be that hard for the rest of us to keep straight.
  - cookiecaper 18y ago
    You're probably right, but there are so many other potential catchy names that aren't the same as Mozilla's interface layer, so I don't know why they couldn't have just gone with one of those and made it easier on everyone.
    - rbanffy 18y ago
      I think it may indicate the project started as a Chrome layer on top of Gecko and they decided mid-project to use WebKit instead. Just a tought. They may as well change the name.
      - druswick 18y ago
        ... but only after it's been in beta for at least 4 years.
    - pxlpshr 18y ago
      it's the interface layer in Flex/AIR too. i don't think it's that unique to Mozilla.
      - iron_ball 18y ago
        Chrome has been called chrome since time immemorial. I remember that's what it was called in the IE-vs-Netscape days. You know, the days that drove me to become a Flash developer.
azharcs 18y ago
I think Google is pretty threatened by Microsoft and Firefox, they are afraid platforms will one-up them in the future and they know it very well.
- jcl 18y ago
  It's hard to believe that Google feels threatened by Firefox when they are directly paying the lion's share of Firefox's development/operating expenses -- a deal which they just extended by three years (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrative-deal-with-google-for-3-years/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrati...).
geuis 18y ago
I don't like the idea of YAB, yet another browser. It's absolutely necessary that we have competition but it's way too easy to dilute the market. It's like the problem of too much choice. We all face it. We go to the store and are greeted with 10 slightly different versions of the same product. Mint toothpaste, mint with extra-whitening, mint-flavored baking soda toothpaste. I don't want to buy one that tastes bad. This stuff is going in my mouth 3x a day, after all. So I'm confused and cranky because I just want my normal toothpaste. My brain remembers the box had the certain logo and the certain white swish of box art. Found it! What size, big or small? Done, continue on to shopping decisions I actually want to think about like what's for dinner. These days, the choice of a browser by 90% of people is the same kind of commodity thought given to toothpaste. They know what they're familiar with. They identify it via the shape and color of the icon, and maybe whether it says "internet" or not. We've had to take 4 years to push Firefox to ~20% marketshare. Internet Explorer still has 75% total, with 30% of that being IE6. Safari, Opera, and all other browsers squeeze into the rough remaining 5% of the market. Adding YAB to the party won't serve anything except to dilute the last 5% some more. What we need is not new browsers, OSS or not. We need marketing. Microsoft had easy marketing for IE. An icon on the desktop called "Internet". We need Apple-style ads with Jason Long as Firefox and John Hodgeman as Internet Explored. Boil the message down to the barest essentials of the message and make it as clear to the "other 90%" as the Big Blue E meant "internet".
- alaskamiller 18y ago
  The browser war was based on distribution, not marketing. Now this will be a war based on money, not distribution. Will Google continue to pay and support Mozilla Foundation? Because once that's gone...
  - siong1987 18y ago
    Google just signed a 3 years deal with Mozilla. So, personally, I don't think that Google Chrome would be direct competitor to Firefox. They are in fact in two different market - normal browsing VS web application. Refer: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrative-deal-with-google-for-3-years/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrati... http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/08/26/firefox-summit-reflections/ http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/08/26/firefox-summit-ref...
s3graham 18y ago
I'd guess this is probably only secondarily for PCs, and probably more likely targeted at mobile platforms. Also, all current JS engines are doing conservative GC? Really?
- william42 18y ago
  Yes, really. I've heard from one of the Webkit JS guys(hey, cpst!) and I think it's because of all the C(++) code you have to interface with it's all conservative.
babo 18y ago
There are some very interesting technical points in the presentation, it's a good thing to redesign some of the core elements of such an important application as a browser. It's sometimes easier to implement something new then rewrite legacy code.
josefresco 18y ago
'porn mode' if adopted by the major browser makers will be a major blow to adult advertising
- gojomo 18y ago
  Please explain. Do adult ad models require long-lived cookies?
emmett 18y ago
This browser looks great - it has a ton of features (mostly security/stability related) that I've been wishing for.
gaborcselle 18y ago
I love the comic book format of this - great idea!
- bootload 18y ago
  "... I love the comic book format of this - great idea! ..." Thank Scott McCloud. McCloud is to the comic world what Stallman ~ http://www.scottmccloud.com/inventions/inventions.html http://www.scottmccloud.com/inventions/inventions.html (Creators bill of rights) and Linus is to the computing world by writing & thinking extensively how to innovate ~ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url?_encoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Scott%20Mccloud http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url?_encodin... and push both the art and science of comics as hard as he can. My favourites include http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-archive.html http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-archive.html and all time favourite Monkey Town ~ http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-17/mi-17.html http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-17/mi-17.html
  - yters 18y ago
    Thank you, those are indeed excellent comics. I think this one is especially good: http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-25/mi-25-1.html http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-25/mi-25-1.html
blackswan 18y ago
Google already represents the internet to a lot of people as a result of it being perceived by these people as the entrance to the internet. "The portal is the network." From this perspective a Google browser is a seriously good way to lock these users in further. The multi-functional use of the address bar is also important - many people use it like this already.
krschultz 18y ago
I don't think this is an attack on Firefox over 50 million bucks. I think this is Google looking at the web and saying we need a faster, more stable, more rich, browser that has these 20 features to allow us to push our web apps forward. Their game is to make web apps equal to desktop apps so that they can sell advertising on them - and hammer Microsoft. This goes towards that goal. I'm looking forward to it. Firefox is in a lot of ways IE done right. This looks like a step forward in a new direction. Maybe not revolutionary, but a step forward none the less.
- william42 18y ago
  Agreed. I wouldn't be surprised if this derived from some pissed-off (at the general state of web browsers esp. wrt slowness) Google engineer.
  - nailer 18y ago
    I wonder if Google's own Firefox devs are working on this. I also wonder why the term Chrome was used - for devs (which are a tiny bunch of people), that term refers to the UI of Mozilla based products. Edit: answering my second question, the term chrome is a general UI term, from before Mozilla. http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/C/chrome.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/C/chrome.html
- litewulf 18y ago
  Really really fast Javascript is game changing. Think about it. People always make fun of how our computers are thousands and millions of times faster than computers of yore and seem to do basically the same thing... except that my word processor has live spell checking, and so on and so forth. Speed is technology enabling. Being able to add features to your site that won't make it pathetically slow when it would have been previously is huge. Screw buzzwords, infrastructure is king. You are only as good as what lies beneath you.
- signa11 18y ago
  perhaps this has more to do with recognizing mobile devices as the next big thing (tm), and providing a seamless experience on both mobile and desktops ?
kilowatt 18y ago
Have you guys SEEN the respective code bases for Mozilla and WebKit? Really, this was inevitable. Their whole tabs-as-process thing is too, when you think about it. Just imagine the potential for a browser-as-OS-with-processes-and-everything and how much they must be salivating to get it on devices and desktops NOT running Windows. It's a hell of a trojan horse in their winning battle to make Microsoft irrelevant... And open source? <3
- tlrobinson 18y ago
  "Have you guys SEEN the respective code bases for Mozilla and WebKit?" I haven't... can you elaborate?
  - kilowatt 18y ago
    Basically, WebKit is the most immediately understandable large scale C++ codebase I've ever seen. They have a strict culture of code reviews on check-in, and reverting any changesets that cause regressions. My commits have been rejected for style--I was first pissed, and eventually impressed :P I can't speak for Mozilla's collaborative culture (and the fact that Firefox emerged from Netscape means it can't be half-bad), but just on an aesthetic level, WebKit C++ is a lot easier on the eyes than Mozilla. One thing that's interesting about WebKit is that in the last 12 months when I've been pulling upstream changesets from them, I've noticed that they're not afraid to do project-wide renames to keep the code clean. It seems like a small thing, but it's a lot more approachable to see clean C++ that uses namespaces and abstracts away platform differences in a coherent way. Mozilla is full of COM interfaces like #define NS_IHTML_CSS_STYLE_SHEET_IID \ {0xb5cc4ac0, 0xeab6, 0x11d1, {0x80, 0x31, 0x00, 0x60, 0x08, 0x15, 0x9b, 0x5a}} class nsIHTMLCSSStyleSheet : public nsIStyleSheet ... and so on. edit: To be fair, I'm just a lot more familiar with WebKit, so maybe someone can defend (or pick apart) Mozilla's sources better than I can. If you check out WebKit, you'll also notice that there's an impressive collection of 210MB(!) of individual layout tests.
    - ii 18y ago
      Mozilla/Gecko is not just a browser engine, it's a platform (XPCOM) and everything is implemented on top of this platform as XPCOM components/interfaces. The bad thing is that these components are not very easy to use, write and integrate into anything else.
pierrefar 18y ago
Confirmation from the Googs itself: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser...
13ren 18y ago
This is a competitor in the AIR / silverlight / JavaFX space Javascript can be enormously faster: compare ActionScript 2.0 and 3.0, which are implementations of ECMAscript (which Javascript is also) in Adobe's Flash. If Google can basically get these things right - local persistence, speed and animation tools - the Web OS that Microsoft has greatly feared will be finally upon us...
- queensnake 18y ago
  Who knows but that what's next on Google's plate is a great implementation of SVG or whatever, to be a completely open alternative to AIR and Silverlight. I think we can almost expect it.
  - llimllib 18y ago
    The webkit implementation of <canvas> is excellent, which fills most of the need for SVG, especially with separate processes for tabs.
    - sratner 18y ago
      And with html5 video support in Webkit, another advantage of Flash evaporates. There is still the question of distribution, though.
  - jsrn 18y ago
    webkit already has decent SVG support: http://webkit.org/projects/svg/status.xml http://webkit.org/projects/svg/status.xml
bprater 18y ago
What's the angle for actually getting folks to use this browser? It's taken years to get mom-and-dad to using Firefox.
- neilk 18y ago
  If I was them, I'd be looking at: - selling it as a corporate intranet platform -- in fact, knowing Google, this is probably already in beta internally - similarly, convincing corporations to make it the installed browser of choice, due to improved security - selling a low-priced GooglePC, or even giving it away. Preconfigured internet with some partner, and make Chrome the default and only shell, with prominent links to Google apps. - putting it on cell phones via Android? But it sounds like the Android team is going with WebKit and not Chrome just yet.
  - nailer 18y ago
    If I was them, I'd also advertise it on my website, you know, just in case someone visits google.com one day.
iigs 18y ago
This is tremendously exciting. There are tons of comments here that are insinuating that Google is doing this to screw over Mozilla somehow. I think this is bogus: 1) I know the comic was long, but they explicitly cover their agenda -- they're taking the time and money to make some hard decisions about the browser that really need to be made (or at least investigated), like separate processes per tab / embedded-object, aggressive javascript revisions and embedding features that are relevant to the new world of applications design. 2) Mozilla sending impressions to Google is still money in Google's pocket. Judging from Mozilla's $millions cut, it's handsome change, too. They have no incentive to kill this golden goose. 3) With all due respect to the (tens of?) thousands of people that have contributed to Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox, why should we even care about Mozilla/FF? When the Mozilla codebase was open sourced, it was roughly equivalent to NS6, which was a dog compared to IE (remember why even the majority of geeks was using IE5/5.5? NS4 was an ancient PoS and NS6 was glacially slow and horrendously unpolished). A lot of us only cared about NS because it ran on the open source OSes we preferred to use, and it represented an alternative to the MS-only world we saw coming our way otherwise. I don't see how Webkit isn't better than the Mozilla codebase in any metric you can throw at it. Conspiracy theorists: Stand down. Sure, a monopolistic Google would be as bad as any other monopoly, but I don't think this is the keystone piece to the formation of the new evil empire.
- netcan 18y ago
  I agree that the theory is bogus. But.. 1) Explicitly covering their agenda only has value if you trust them. If Steve Ballmer was telling you about how he wants to improve the web experience for everyone, would you buy it. 2)They don't lose any impressions by replacing FF. They just stop paying for them. 3) I agree. But that just means you don't care if they kill FF. Not that they're not.
shiranaihito 18y ago
Well, this can't be anything but good for (us) users. It's a bit peculiar though, how both the recently published IE8 and now "Chrome" both have tabs isolated. I hope Opera will be able to keep up with all the competition! The inventors of Mouse Gestures & Speed Dial etc deserve quite a bit of respect.
AndyKelley 18y ago
http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome/22 http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome/22 What would you use this incognito feature for, except the obvious? Are they really creating a feature just for that one thing?
- ojbyrne 18y ago
  A lot of people use internet cafes, especially outside north america, some of which don't do the best job of wiping data after use.
- rglullis 18y ago
  Think of library computers, or the "Telecentros" in São Paulo. Even more important. With the browser being a true OS and more and more applications living in the cloud, there is a slight chance that people would have less of a need to carry their own laptop around, and just work on someone else's. Incognito mode could be a way to make that easy and worry-free.
- lacker 18y ago
  A lot of people are concerned about privacy on the internet in general without understanding any technical details. So there will probably be some people that browse with "incognito" on all the time, just to feel safer. Plus the obvious.
trapper 18y ago
That presentation is amazing. Everyone else (adobe, microsoft, sun, ibm, w3c) must be shi*%@ng themselves! I can't wait to use it. I'm sick of FF's crap memory footprint and single processes. Bring it.
- kilowatt 18y ago
  Agreed on the presentation. What struck me is how technical it was (for a comic book quick overview). It's obviously geared towards developers--they really wanted to plant their flag in the sand and say "we're doing this: here is why it is good."
  - rglovejoy 18y ago
    I liked that the actual developers were giving the presentation in comic book form, instead of showing anonymous people. Or worse: imagine it Google had hired Marvel or DC to do the comic. We would be seeing Batman or Reed Richards trying to explain how multiple processes are more efficient. The term "rock star" is way overused in the software field. It's nice to see some developers actually being treated as stars.
kylec 18y ago
As someone who is fed up when Flash crashes and takes down the whole browser IT'S ABOUT TIME someone put each tab on a separate thread! The small performance penalty will pay for itself abundantly with the improved stability it will provide.
- wmorein 18y ago
  IE was already multi-threaded (just not multi-process): http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/05/26/422103.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/05/26/422103.aspx
netcan 18y ago
Question: Is there any/much value in controlling the browser or owning the most popular browser in itself? *By 'in itself' I mean ignoring advantages such as Google's: 'We need web-apps to work' or Microsoft's: 'We need web-apps not to work' If default Search Engine settings are actually worth what Google paid ($55m for 15% of the market X 3 yrs) & no other revenue sources exist, the market's worth about $120m p/y. is that it?
- william42 18y ago
  Google gets most of its money from advertising. Eyeballs == Money.
  - netcan 18y ago
    Where is the browser == eyeballs? BTW, I think that the big success of Google is in realising that's really true. Web Searches == money. But not inherently.
    - nailer 18y ago
      Owning the browser is a better way to target the eyeballs.
      - netcan 18y ago
        Are you talking about eyeballs for search? Because that'd be included in the above estimate ($120m p/y for %100 of the market) assuming they're paying mozilla fairly for defaults. Do you mean something else? Like eyeballs on the browser itself?
        nailer 18y ago
        I'm talking about targeting eyeballs for ads. By owning the browser, Google (who a media sales company) know more about you, and can generate a better yield for their customers (ie, advertisers).
siculars 18y ago
good move google! this has nothing to do with firefox. it has everything to do with webkit and ie. basically if you wanna be a big player you need your own toys. a google browser will be googles entry to to the new app space on an equal footing with ms. this is a place where you can bring in money by sale or subscription - without advertising. but beyond that, google needs to compete with apples webkit on the mobile front. they need to embed a browser in android - preferably their browser ;) so far mozilla does not have an answer to the mobile webkit. i dont see this as a dig on mozilla, google is funding them. i see mozilla remaining the best consumer app and goggles chrome becoming standard fair for mobile and desktop app browsing/computing for enterprise.
neetij 18y ago
Techcrunch has some screenshots from an official Google Chrome site (now taken offline) - http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/01/first-public-screen-captures-of-google-chrome/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/01/first-public-screen-cap...
b1te 18y ago
im having trouble explain chrome's advantages to the gf - multi-threaded javascript engine? - its def geared towards developers..
deleted 18y ago
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rglovejoy 18y ago
All I am seeing is a lot of material about Chrome, but has anyone here actually tried it out? It is supposed to be available today (September 2); has anyone been able to download it? *edit: fixed grammar error
raheemm 18y ago
Wow! What an amazing explanation - I learned a lot about browser technologies just from reading this.
rcoder 18y ago
I'm curious why there aren't any platform partisans screaming "bloody murder" about Google's obvious flaunting of GUI tradition on this one. Putting tabs on top of the window titlebar may be the greatest UI innovation since tabs themselves, but it's going to make Chrome windows look and act differently from every other application on the user's computer. That being said, a browser using WebKit + Gears + solic process sandbox model appeals to me a lot. Props to Google for explicitly referencing the Biba model, too -- if they can get web developers to start paying attention to the body of security theory published in the last 40 years, the browser itself could be a huge flop, and still leave us better off than we are currently.
schtog 18y ago
I'm using Chrome right now and it is fine, a cleaned up Firefox, but nothing mindblowing. What do I sign up for in terms of privacy? I didn't read through the whole deal(who does?) but saw some stuff about ads, does Google track my surfing? I'm missing the top right Firefox searchbar where I can search wikipedia and other sites though.

173 points by nickb 18y ago

ryanmahoski 18y ago

Windows only. No Mac, no Linux.

pqs 18y ago
In the post in the official google blog they said that they are also preparing versions for linux and osx. This makes sense, as they want everybody to be able to use the webabs of the future.
deleted 18y ago
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mixmax 18y ago

So soon we'll have yet another browser to check for compatibility issues in CSS and javascript. Great.

cookiecaper 18y ago
Well, assuming it uses a pristine WebKit backend, you should only have to test in one browser with the same WebKit build. :) I guess that might be idealistic thinking, but hopefully it pans out.
- meat-eater 18y ago
  They seem to be using their own javascript engine, so it might need separate testing because of that. Although if it becomes popular enough, most javascript libraries and frameworks will surely support it.
  - tlrobinson 18y ago
    There are actually very few inconsistencies in browsers implementations of the JavaScript language, it's the DOM that's the problem. If all they're doing is swapping out the engine for a JavaScript 1.5+ compatible engine, then we should be fine.
  - mpk 18y ago
    You can bet they will. The V8 engine is unlikely to present much of an obstacle. We have a large JS codebase and the Opera, WebKit (Safari), Spidermonkey (Gecko/Firebird), Rhino (Spidermonkey port to Java) and JScript (IE6/7) engines are no hassle to support. The hard part is DOM interaction and styling. But as they're using WebKit and are putting a lot of effort into compatibility - this should be a breeze. The really hard work is support for IE6. 1990s JS assumptions, very bad and inconsistent DOM behaviour, etc. New, open JS engines with a different take on executing JS (Tamarin, V8) are wonderful news for JS developers everywhere. And consumers too, of course.
    - morbidkk 18y ago
      any link to V8 project? Comic strip says its just a module in Chrome and can be used extensively for other projects i.e. that means games/cool desktop/mobile apps
    - bOR_ 18y ago
      I know the portion of IE6 on the web is still around 25%.. but do you know what portion of your customers is actually using IE6 still? I wonder at what point it is justified to return a 'please update your browser, preferrably to one of these: [list of reasonable browsers]', just because of the effort it takes you to keep IE6 compatibility.
      - jmtulloss 18y ago
        At a small startup with a huge and complicated JS base, we've done just that. There's no way we can justify the man hours required to support IE6.
- deleted 18y ago
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pistoriusp 18y ago
Also google might have more push than Mozilla to get it installed on all of those machines running IE6.

sh1mmer 18y ago

I don't see the need for Google to try and compete in a space where there is already plenty of competition and Open Source innovation. Maybe they are tired of giving Mozilla Corp Ad Words money for Firefox searches.

neilk 18y ago
They just renewed the contract with Mozilla. That's got nothing to do with it. And there's not nearly enough competition in browsers. Sure, there are lots of projects, but few of them are serious contenders for the average Windows user -- maybe Opera and Firefox qualify, but that's about it. If you've ever tried to write a complex web app you immediately bang your head against the low, low ceiling afforded by the browser. Google knows this as well as anybody and it impedes adoption of Google apps like Gmail or Docs. Making the browser into a better platform is good for their business -- note they are giving away their spiffy new JS engine and the whole thing is open source. If Firefox adopted their innovations tomorrow or one-upped them, I'm sure the Chrome team would be very happy.
- wayne 18y ago
  Plus, a little less altruistically, it lets Google embed stuff like Google Gears and Google Toolbar directly into the browser, set Google.com as the browser homepage, and add a bunch of buttons linking to various Google services. Companies like Google pay a lot for defaults like that. Plus, like Apple, they've got a mobile platform now so maybe they'll use some subset of Chrome in Android.
Hexstream 18y ago
And did you see the need for Google to try and compete in the search engine space when there was already plenty of competition?

dabeeeenster 18y ago

Anyone got a mirror? It's crawling...

haasted 18y ago
The graphic presentation is accessible through http://blogoscoped.com.nyud.net/google-chrome/ http://blogoscoped.com.nyud.net/google-chrome/ .
- johnyzee 18y ago
  That is a badass presentation. I wouldn't have read 10% of that information had it been delivered as paragraphs of text.
  - mechanical_fish 18y ago
    It's brilliant design work. Favorite thing I've noticed so far: The trick of managing to introduce N different members of the design team, and give you an idea of what each one is working on, during the presentation by having each one deliver five lines and then hand over to the next. This trick would never, ever work in a screencast or a movie -- even if every individual had the acting chops to pull it off, it would feel like a circus act. But in comics, it works, because the comic characters are sufficiently abstract that they can take over from each other, almost mid-sentence, without a jarring discontinuity. I swear that reading McCloud is almost enough to send me to art school.
    - william42 18y ago
      Hell, just set up some webspace and try to start a webcomic, and you can probably learn basic art skills "on the job" as it were.
neilk 18y ago
pdf, courtesy Brian Enigma: http://brevity.org/pic/chrome/Google_on_Google_Chrome.pdf http://brevity.org/pic/chrome/Google_on_Google_Chrome.pdf zip of pngs: http://brevity.org/pic/chrome/google-chrome-mccloud-comic.zip http://brevity.org/pic/chrome/google-chrome-mccloud-comic.zi... or, all in individual png files: http://brevity.org/pic/chrome/ http://brevity.org/pic/chrome/

cookiecaper 18y ago

This is cool and all, but did they have to choose "Chrome" for the name? No reason to do that other than to cause confusion, I think.

jeffgreco 18y ago
Strikes me as a very catchy name for the typical user, who most likely doesn't have "browser chrome" in their vocabulary already. And I doubt it'll be that hard for the rest of us to keep straight.
- cookiecaper 18y ago
  You're probably right, but there are so many other potential catchy names that aren't the same as Mozilla's interface layer, so I don't know why they couldn't have just gone with one of those and made it easier on everyone.
  - rbanffy 18y ago
    I think it may indicate the project started as a Chrome layer on top of Gecko and they decided mid-project to use WebKit instead. Just a tought. They may as well change the name.
    - druswick 18y ago
      ... but only after it's been in beta for at least 4 years.
  - pxlpshr 18y ago
    it's the interface layer in Flex/AIR too. i don't think it's that unique to Mozilla.
    - iron_ball 18y ago
      Chrome has been called chrome since time immemorial. I remember that's what it was called in the IE-vs-Netscape days. You know, the days that drove me to become a Flash developer.

azharcs 18y ago

I think Google is pretty threatened by Microsoft and Firefox, they are afraid platforms will one-up them in the future and they know it very well.

jcl 18y ago
It's hard to believe that Google feels threatened by Firefox when they are directly paying the lion's share of Firefox's development/operating expenses -- a deal which they just extended by three years (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrative-deal-with-google-for-3-years/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrati...).

geuis 18y ago

I don't like the idea of YAB, yet another browser. It's absolutely necessary that we have competition but it's way too easy to dilute the market. It's like the problem of too much choice. We all face it. We go to the store and are greeted with 10 slightly different versions of the same product. Mint toothpaste, mint with extra-whitening, mint-flavored baking soda toothpaste. I don't want to buy one that tastes bad. This stuff is going in my mouth 3x a day, after all. So I'm confused and cranky because I just want my normal toothpaste. My brain remembers the box had the certain logo and the certain white swish of box art. Found it! What size, big or small? Done, continue on to shopping decisions I actually want to think about like what's for dinner. These days, the choice of a browser by 90% of people is the same kind of commodity thought given to toothpaste. They know what they're familiar with. They identify it via the shape and color of the icon, and maybe whether it says "internet" or not. We've had to take 4 years to push Firefox to ~20% marketshare. Internet Explorer still has 75% total, with 30% of that being IE6. Safari, Opera, and all other browsers squeeze into the rough remaining 5% of the market. Adding YAB to the party won't serve anything except to dilute the last 5% some more. What we need is not new browsers, OSS or not. We need marketing. Microsoft had easy marketing for IE. An icon on the desktop called "Internet". We need Apple-style ads with Jason Long as Firefox and John Hodgeman as Internet Explored. Boil the message down to the barest essentials of the message and make it as clear to the "other 90%" as the Big Blue E meant "internet".

alaskamiller 18y ago
The browser war was based on distribution, not marketing. Now this will be a war based on money, not distribution. Will Google continue to pay and support Mozilla Foundation? Because once that's gone...
- siong1987 18y ago
  Google just signed a 3 years deal with Mozilla. So, personally, I don't think that Google Chrome would be direct competitor to Firefox. They are in fact in two different market - normal browsing VS web application. Refer: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrative-deal-with-google-for-3-years/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrati... http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/08/26/firefox-summit-reflections/ http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/08/26/firefox-summit-ref...

s3graham 18y ago

I'd guess this is probably only secondarily for PCs, and probably more likely targeted at mobile platforms. Also, all current JS engines are doing conservative GC? Really?

william42 18y ago
Yes, really. I've heard from one of the Webkit JS guys(hey, cpst!) and I think it's because of all the C(++) code you have to interface with it's all conservative.

babo 18y ago

There are some very interesting technical points in the presentation, it's a good thing to redesign some of the core elements of such an important application as a browser. It's sometimes easier to implement something new then rewrite legacy code.

josefresco 18y ago

'porn mode' if adopted by the major browser makers will be a major blow to adult advertising

gojomo 18y ago
Please explain. Do adult ad models require long-lived cookies?

emmett 18y ago

This browser looks great - it has a ton of features (mostly security/stability related) that I've been wishing for.

gaborcselle 18y ago

I love the comic book format of this - great idea!

bootload 18y ago
"... I love the comic book format of this - great idea! ..." Thank Scott McCloud. McCloud is to the comic world what Stallman ~ http://www.scottmccloud.com/inventions/inventions.html http://www.scottmccloud.com/inventions/inventions.html (Creators bill of rights) and Linus is to the computing world by writing & thinking extensively how to innovate ~ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url?_encoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Scott%20Mccloud http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url?_encodin... and push both the art and science of comics as hard as he can. My favourites include http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-archive.html http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-archive.html and all time favourite Monkey Town ~ http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-17/mi-17.html http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-17/mi-17.html
- yters 18y ago
  Thank you, those are indeed excellent comics. I think this one is especially good: http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-25/mi-25-1.html http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-25/mi-25-1.html

blackswan 18y ago

Google already represents the internet to a lot of people as a result of it being perceived by these people as the entrance to the internet. "The portal is the network." From this perspective a Google browser is a seriously good way to lock these users in further. The multi-functional use of the address bar is also important - many people use it like this already.

krschultz 18y ago

I don't think this is an attack on Firefox over 50 million bucks. I think this is Google looking at the web and saying we need a faster, more stable, more rich, browser that has these 20 features to allow us to push our web apps forward. Their game is to make web apps equal to desktop apps so that they can sell advertising on them - and hammer Microsoft. This goes towards that goal. I'm looking forward to it. Firefox is in a lot of ways IE done right. This looks like a step forward in a new direction. Maybe not revolutionary, but a step forward none the less.

william42 18y ago
Agreed. I wouldn't be surprised if this derived from some pissed-off (at the general state of web browsers esp. wrt slowness) Google engineer.
- nailer 18y ago
  I wonder if Google's own Firefox devs are working on this. I also wonder why the term Chrome was used - for devs (which are a tiny bunch of people), that term refers to the UI of Mozilla based products. Edit: answering my second question, the term chrome is a general UI term, from before Mozilla. http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/C/chrome.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/C/chrome.html
litewulf 18y ago
Really really fast Javascript is game changing. Think about it. People always make fun of how our computers are thousands and millions of times faster than computers of yore and seem to do basically the same thing... except that my word processor has live spell checking, and so on and so forth. Speed is technology enabling. Being able to add features to your site that won't make it pathetically slow when it would have been previously is huge. Screw buzzwords, infrastructure is king. You are only as good as what lies beneath you.
signa11 18y ago
perhaps this has more to do with recognizing mobile devices as the next big thing (tm), and providing a seamless experience on both mobile and desktops ?

kilowatt 18y ago

Have you guys SEEN the respective code bases for Mozilla and WebKit? Really, this was inevitable. Their whole tabs-as-process thing is too, when you think about it. Just imagine the potential for a browser-as-OS-with-processes-and-everything and how much they must be salivating to get it on devices and desktops NOT running Windows. It's a hell of a trojan horse in their winning battle to make Microsoft irrelevant... And open source? <3

tlrobinson 18y ago
"Have you guys SEEN the respective code bases for Mozilla and WebKit?" I haven't... can you elaborate?
- kilowatt 18y ago
  Basically, WebKit is the most immediately understandable large scale C++ codebase I've ever seen. They have a strict culture of code reviews on check-in, and reverting any changesets that cause regressions. My commits have been rejected for style--I was first pissed, and eventually impressed :P I can't speak for Mozilla's collaborative culture (and the fact that Firefox emerged from Netscape means it can't be half-bad), but just on an aesthetic level, WebKit C++ is a lot easier on the eyes than Mozilla. One thing that's interesting about WebKit is that in the last 12 months when I've been pulling upstream changesets from them, I've noticed that they're not afraid to do project-wide renames to keep the code clean. It seems like a small thing, but it's a lot more approachable to see clean C++ that uses namespaces and abstracts away platform differences in a coherent way. Mozilla is full of COM interfaces like #define NS_IHTML_CSS_STYLE_SHEET_IID \ {0xb5cc4ac0, 0xeab6, 0x11d1, {0x80, 0x31, 0x00, 0x60, 0x08, 0x15, 0x9b, 0x5a}} class nsIHTMLCSSStyleSheet : public nsIStyleSheet ... and so on. edit: To be fair, I'm just a lot more familiar with WebKit, so maybe someone can defend (or pick apart) Mozilla's sources better than I can. If you check out WebKit, you'll also notice that there's an impressive collection of 210MB(!) of individual layout tests.
  - ii 18y ago
    Mozilla/Gecko is not just a browser engine, it's a platform (XPCOM) and everything is implemented on top of this platform as XPCOM components/interfaces. The bad thing is that these components are not very easy to use, write and integrate into anything else.

pierrefar 18y ago

Confirmation from the Googs itself: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser...

13ren 18y ago

This is a competitor in the AIR / silverlight / JavaFX space Javascript can be enormously faster: compare ActionScript 2.0 and 3.0, which are implementations of ECMAscript (which Javascript is also) in Adobe's Flash. If Google can basically get these things right - local persistence, speed and animation tools - the Web OS that Microsoft has greatly feared will be finally upon us...

queensnake 18y ago
Who knows but that what's next on Google's plate is a great implementation of SVG or whatever, to be a completely open alternative to AIR and Silverlight. I think we can almost expect it.
- llimllib 18y ago
  The webkit implementation of <canvas> is excellent, which fills most of the need for SVG, especially with separate processes for tabs.
  - sratner 18y ago
    And with html5 video support in Webkit, another advantage of Flash evaporates. There is still the question of distribution, though.
- jsrn 18y ago
  webkit already has decent SVG support: http://webkit.org/projects/svg/status.xml http://webkit.org/projects/svg/status.xml

bprater 18y ago

What's the angle for actually getting folks to use this browser? It's taken years to get mom-and-dad to using Firefox.

neilk 18y ago
If I was them, I'd be looking at: - selling it as a corporate intranet platform -- in fact, knowing Google, this is probably already in beta internally - similarly, convincing corporations to make it the installed browser of choice, due to improved security - selling a low-priced GooglePC, or even giving it away. Preconfigured internet with some partner, and make Chrome the default and only shell, with prominent links to Google apps. - putting it on cell phones via Android? But it sounds like the Android team is going with WebKit and not Chrome just yet.
- nailer 18y ago
  If I was them, I'd also advertise it on my website, you know, just in case someone visits google.com one day.

iigs 18y ago

This is tremendously exciting. There are tons of comments here that are insinuating that Google is doing this to screw over Mozilla somehow. I think this is bogus: 1) I know the comic was long, but they explicitly cover their agenda -- they're taking the time and money to make some hard decisions about the browser that really need to be made (or at least investigated), like separate processes per tab / embedded-object, aggressive javascript revisions and embedding features that are relevant to the new world of applications design. 2) Mozilla sending impressions to Google is still money in Google's pocket. Judging from Mozilla's $millions cut, it's handsome change, too. They have no incentive to kill this golden goose. 3) With all due respect to the (tens of?) thousands of people that have contributed to Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox, why should we even care about Mozilla/FF? When the Mozilla codebase was open sourced, it was roughly equivalent to NS6, which was a dog compared to IE (remember why even the majority of geeks was using IE5/5.5? NS4 was an ancient PoS and NS6 was glacially slow and horrendously unpolished). A lot of us only cared about NS because it ran on the open source OSes we preferred to use, and it represented an alternative to the MS-only world we saw coming our way otherwise. I don't see how Webkit isn't better than the Mozilla codebase in any metric you can throw at it. Conspiracy theorists: Stand down. Sure, a monopolistic Google would be as bad as any other monopoly, but I don't think this is the keystone piece to the formation of the new evil empire.

netcan 18y ago
I agree that the theory is bogus. But.. 1) Explicitly covering their agenda only has value if you trust them. If Steve Ballmer was telling you about how he wants to improve the web experience for everyone, would you buy it. 2)They don't lose any impressions by replacing FF. They just stop paying for them. 3) I agree. But that just means you don't care if they kill FF. Not that they're not.

shiranaihito 18y ago

Well, this can't be anything but good for (us) users. It's a bit peculiar though, how both the recently published IE8 and now "Chrome" both have tabs isolated. I hope Opera will be able to keep up with all the competition! The inventors of Mouse Gestures & Speed Dial etc deserve quite a bit of respect.

AndyKelley 18y ago

http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome/22 http://blogoscoped.com/google-chrome/22 What would you use this incognito feature for, except the obvious? Are they really creating a feature just for that one thing?

ojbyrne 18y ago
A lot of people use internet cafes, especially outside north america, some of which don't do the best job of wiping data after use.
rglullis 18y ago
Think of library computers, or the "Telecentros" in São Paulo. Even more important. With the browser being a true OS and more and more applications living in the cloud, there is a slight chance that people would have less of a need to carry their own laptop around, and just work on someone else's. Incognito mode could be a way to make that easy and worry-free.
lacker 18y ago
A lot of people are concerned about privacy on the internet in general without understanding any technical details. So there will probably be some people that browse with "incognito" on all the time, just to feel safer. Plus the obvious.

trapper 18y ago

That presentation is amazing. Everyone else (adobe, microsoft, sun, ibm, w3c) must be shi*%@ng themselves! I can't wait to use it. I'm sick of FF's crap memory footprint and single processes. Bring it.

kilowatt 18y ago
Agreed on the presentation. What struck me is how technical it was (for a comic book quick overview). It's obviously geared towards developers--they really wanted to plant their flag in the sand and say "we're doing this: here is why it is good."
- rglovejoy 18y ago
  I liked that the actual developers were giving the presentation in comic book form, instead of showing anonymous people. Or worse: imagine it Google had hired Marvel or DC to do the comic. We would be seeing Batman or Reed Richards trying to explain how multiple processes are more efficient. The term "rock star" is way overused in the software field. It's nice to see some developers actually being treated as stars.

kylec 18y ago

As someone who is fed up when Flash crashes and takes down the whole browser IT'S ABOUT TIME someone put each tab on a separate thread! The small performance penalty will pay for itself abundantly with the improved stability it will provide.

wmorein 18y ago
IE was already multi-threaded (just not multi-process): http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/05/26/422103.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/05/26/422103.aspx

netcan 18y ago

Question: Is there any/much value in controlling the browser or owning the most popular browser in itself? *By 'in itself' I mean ignoring advantages such as Google's: 'We need web-apps to work' or Microsoft's: 'We need web-apps not to work' If default Search Engine settings are actually worth what Google paid ($55m for 15% of the market X 3 yrs) & no other revenue sources exist, the market's worth about $120m p/y. is that it?

william42 18y ago
Google gets most of its money from advertising. Eyeballs == Money.
- netcan 18y ago
  Where is the browser == eyeballs? BTW, I think that the big success of Google is in realising that's really true. Web Searches == money. But not inherently.
  - nailer 18y ago
    Owning the browser is a better way to target the eyeballs.
    - netcan 18y ago
      Are you talking about eyeballs for search? Because that'd be included in the above estimate ($120m p/y for %100 of the market) assuming they're paying mozilla fairly for defaults. Do you mean something else? Like eyeballs on the browser itself?
      - nailer 18y ago
        I'm talking about targeting eyeballs for ads. By owning the browser, Google (who a media sales company) know more about you, and can generate a better yield for their customers (ie, advertisers).

siculars 18y ago

good move google! this has nothing to do with firefox. it has everything to do with webkit and ie. basically if you wanna be a big player you need your own toys. a google browser will be googles entry to to the new app space on an equal footing with ms. this is a place where you can bring in money by sale or subscription - without advertising. but beyond that, google needs to compete with apples webkit on the mobile front. they need to embed a browser in android - preferably their browser ;) so far mozilla does not have an answer to the mobile webkit. i dont see this as a dig on mozilla, google is funding them. i see mozilla remaining the best consumer app and goggles chrome becoming standard fair for mobile and desktop app browsing/computing for enterprise.

neetij 18y ago

Techcrunch has some screenshots from an official Google Chrome site (now taken offline) - http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/01/first-public-screen-captures-of-google-chrome/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/01/first-public-screen-cap...

b1te 18y ago

im having trouble explain chrome's advantages to the gf - multi-threaded javascript engine? - its def geared towards developers..

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

rglovejoy 18y ago

All I am seeing is a lot of material about Chrome, but has anyone here actually tried it out? It is supposed to be available today (September 2); has anyone been able to download it? *edit: fixed grammar error

raheemm 18y ago

Wow! What an amazing explanation - I learned a lot about browser technologies just from reading this.

rcoder 18y ago

I'm curious why there aren't any platform partisans screaming "bloody murder" about Google's obvious flaunting of GUI tradition on this one. Putting tabs on top of the window titlebar may be the greatest UI innovation since tabs themselves, but it's going to make Chrome windows look and act differently from every other application on the user's computer. That being said, a browser using WebKit + Gears + solic process sandbox model appeals to me a lot. Props to Google for explicitly referencing the Biba model, too -- if they can get web developers to start paying attention to the body of security theory published in the last 40 years, the browser itself could be a huge flop, and still leave us better off than we are currently.

schtog 18y ago

I'm using Chrome right now and it is fine, a cleaned up Firefox, but nothing mindblowing. What do I sign up for in terms of privacy? I didn't read through the whole deal(who does?) but saw some stuff about ads, does Google track my surfing? I'm missing the top right Firefox searchbar where I can search wikipedia and other sites though.