Google launches shock web browser

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 2 Sep 2008 at 08:40

Google has launched its own web browser, dubbed Chrome, as it looks to displace Firefox and Internet Explorer.

The web giant announced the browser on its blog page, explaining in grand fashion that the launch would help "drive innovation on the web."

"We realised that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser," the blog post says. "What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build."

Among these innovations, Google is touting better memory utilisation, with each tab in Chrome representing a completely independent browser environment, meaning that if one crashes it can be shut down without bringing the whole browser grinding to a halt. It's a feature already being used to sell Internet Explorer 8.

"When a tab is closed in Google Chrome, you're ending the whole process... You can look under the hood with Google Chrome's task manager to see what sites are using the most memory, downloading the most bytes and abusing your CPU so you can place blame where blame belongs."

Google is also promising "improved speed and responsiveness across the board."

"We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers," the blog claims.

As with Android, Google is also promising to make Chrome an open-source initiative, putting it in direct competition with current open-source favourite Firefox.

"We owe a great debt to many open-source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path. We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others, and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward."

The beta of Chrome will be made available Tuesday.

Read the rest of our Google browser coverage here

1. Mozilla: Google is not trying to kill us

2. Mozilla welcomes Google browser

3. Firefox loses its sugar daddy

4. Chrome and the multi-core cloud