4 ms·

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,

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 ?
johnyzee 18y ago
That seems to be what they are saying. However, Google does not have a good track record of delivering product for non-technical end users. GMail, their one succesful homegrown, mass-market, non-search product that I can think of, is a mess (haphazard user interface, no improvement for years, still beta). For such a strategic app, that is worrying. As for their platform vision, it also seems very scattershot. They have visionary initiatives (GWT, Gears, App Engine, now Chrome) but it seems awfully disjointed with hardly any synergy between these projects. I think it has yet to be proven that these projects can be integrated into something larger than the sum of its parts. For my money, if they can't do it with Chrome I have no confidence they can do it at all.
- jotto 18y ago
  GMail has been improved in ways other than UI changes. They have rewritten the HTML, CSS and JS to make it more hackable for Greasemonkey - and in the process, optimized that HTML, CSS, and JS to reduce number of connections and subsequently load time. The backend has seen massive scaling. They added POP and IMAP. I don't know what I would change for GMail. It's a strong email client that gets the job done. I wouldn't consider it "worrying".
- Raphael 18y ago
  iGoogle is the synergy. This will become apparent early next year.
hooande 18y ago
Other than the faster javascript, I don't see a lot of "game changing" innovations in this browser. These seem like mostly incremental improvements and small features. If the java engine is significantly faster this could really push things forward. Otherwise this is less than world beating.
- ars 18y ago
  You missed a massive one: multithreading. I've wanted this for ages with firefox. Each tab runs on it's own?! It's exactly what I've been wanting.
  - abossy 18y ago
    Mozilla is supposed to implement the same concept "soon."
  - LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
    Just to be nitpicky... it sounds like they're using separate OS processes rather than threads within a single process. Hence, each tab would have its own entry in `top`... edit: that'll teach me to not read the comic before commenting. It sounds like they're actually using lightweight processes.

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 ?

johnyzee 18y ago

That seems to be what they are saying. However, Google does not have a good track record of delivering product for non-technical end users. GMail, their one succesful homegrown, mass-market, non-search product that I can think of, is a mess (haphazard user interface, no improvement for years, still beta). For such a strategic app, that is worrying. As for their platform vision, it also seems very scattershot. They have visionary initiatives (GWT, Gears, App Engine, now Chrome) but it seems awfully disjointed with hardly any synergy between these projects. I think it has yet to be proven that these projects can be integrated into something larger than the sum of its parts. For my money, if they can't do it with Chrome I have no confidence they can do it at all.

jotto 18y ago
GMail has been improved in ways other than UI changes. They have rewritten the HTML, CSS and JS to make it more hackable for Greasemonkey - and in the process, optimized that HTML, CSS, and JS to reduce number of connections and subsequently load time. The backend has seen massive scaling. They added POP and IMAP. I don't know what I would change for GMail. It's a strong email client that gets the job done. I wouldn't consider it "worrying".
Raphael 18y ago
iGoogle is the synergy. This will become apparent early next year.

hooande 18y ago

Other than the faster javascript, I don't see a lot of "game changing" innovations in this browser. These seem like mostly incremental improvements and small features. If the java engine is significantly faster this could really push things forward. Otherwise this is less than world beating.

ars 18y ago
You missed a massive one: multithreading. I've wanted this for ages with firefox. Each tab runs on it's own?! It's exactly what I've been wanting.
- abossy 18y ago
  Mozilla is supposed to implement the same concept "soon."
- LogicHoleFlaw 18y ago
  Just to be nitpicky... it sounds like they're using separate OS processes rather than threads within a single process. Hence, each tab would have its own entry in `top`... edit: that'll teach me to not read the comic before commenting. It sounds like they're actually using lightweight processes.