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So Google has decided to jump into the browser market called Chrome. Here is my take on their attempt:

One box for everything – Very interesting concept having the search, history and address bar in one place which really makes you think why on earth do existing browsers out there have a dedicated search box. Note that with a bit of tweaking, you actually can configure other browsers to search directly from the address bar anyway.

New Tab Page – Nothing new here, Opera has implemented a similar speed dial feature eons ago.

Application Shortcuts – Already in Firefox; in Mac OSX Leopard, you can even save portions of webpages as widgets to the dashboard instead of the whole page with Safari.

Dynamic Tabs – You must be using a sub-standard browser if it does not have tabs or have difficulty rearranging and managing them. Chrome’s dynamic tab behaviour is similar to Safari and to a certain extent that of Firefox and Internet Explorer. If the tabs now appear at the top of the address bar instead of below it, so what?

Crash Control – No comment here – all browsers will crash at some point, the recovery expectation has always been the same to restore the previous session. I have not played with Chrome long enough to experience one yet.

Incognito Mode – Amazing what names people will try to come up with instead of just calling it “porn mode”. Nothing new. Available in Safari already.

Safe Browsing – Does sound awfully familiar with Internet Explorer’s “Phishing Filter”. When Microsoft introduced this feature in Internet Explorer 7, there was uproar from the public claiming Microsoft could potentially keep track of what websites you visit when a website is cross-checked against their database. How come no one is complaining when Google implements a similar feature?

Instant Bookmarks – Firefox 3 introduced a one-click bookmark feature. How much instant do you need to be?

Importing settings – Actually, this is a good switching technique. Of course, you want people who try out your new browser to be a painless experience, thus you will think of a easy way to import existing content from other browsers.

Simpler Downloads – Nothing breakthrough here. I will be pretty annoyed if a download bar actually stays on my browser window occupying precious real estate on my laptop screen, even worse if the file download takes a while. Safari and Firefox can be configured to download files with minimal interaction, having default download locations and even process downloads according to their extension.

Other features include:

Developer Tools - Great for developers, useless for everyday users. There should be less and less emphasis on memory management these days. There is a Javascript debugger and Javascript engine. A Task Manager is available to show resource allocation. Again, this is useless for typical everyday use unless you are one of those stats obsessed people that has every single usage meter that measures everything from your CPU speed, memory usage, thread count, temperature etc. I have 4GB of RAM and I the need to call up a task manager is few and far between – obviously this statement may change in the future but it is more-than-enough to load more-than-enough webpages for now.

Setup and configuration – Small install file and standard configuration settings such as proxy servers, search engine preferences, password behaviour and download locations.

At the end of the day, Chrome feels like a mutant hybrid of all the major browsers out there. Based on Webkit, this is the very same platform that powers Apple’s Safari browser, which has been noted for its superior rendering performance over other browsers. The memory management concept would be useful for implementation on mobile devices with limited resources, certainly to think browsers “hog” up memory should be a thing of the past unless you are still on a machine with 256MB RAM (my condolences for that).

Here is an analogy – there are only so many ways you can design a flush system on a toilet. What we really need is a truly innovative way that will completely change our behaviour on how we browse and search the web. There is nothing innovative about Chrome that is not already available in other browsers. I think there is still a fair bit to go before it becomes a serious contender to the browser war.

For more information on Google Chrome, visit http://www.google.com/chrome

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 10:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized.