Browser Wars: Enter Google Chrome

The big story of the week is that Google is the latest company to enter the browser wars with a new browser called Chrome. We didn’t know what to expect from a browser with a lame name and a logo that looks like a cross between a pokeball and a Simon says toy. But, we have been running it all week and for beta software, we were impressed.

Chrome works very well, it’s fast, reliable, and has a number of attractive new features. Chrome is a little different than Internet Explorer (IE) or Firefox, like Google itself, takes a minimalist approach to user interface, very sparse. The biggest difference is that there is no search bar, the address bar has two functions and the convenience is an advantage. Another cool feature, when you create a new tab, the default is to show thumbnails of the most visited websites.

The most important change, which has been causing some debate on the interwebs, is under the hood. Each instance of the browser, each tab or window, runs as its own process. This means that if something goes wrong with a website and the browser freezes, you can kill that tab (process) without having to restart the entire browser, like IE or Firefox. But there is a downside, each of the browser instances take more computer resources.

To Google, the benefits of their own browser is clear, the promotion of Google and its own services, and Google will receive information about where people surf, even if they are not using Google (depending on your security configuration).

For users there is no compelling reason to switch to Chrome. Either IE, Firefox or Opera are more polished, and they all have features that users expect. But Chrome offers a series of innovations in terms of how it looks and perhaps more importantly how it is designed. It will shake up the browser marketplace and have a positive effect on future browser development, competition is always good for innovation.

Why don’t you decide, download Chrome for yourself (only for Windows).

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