Google’s “Chrome” Is Something To Get Excited About

The office e-mail this morning was electric with talk of Google’s latest creation - an Internet browser. Dubbed Chrome, its announcement came along with a really spiffy, 38-page comic illustrated by the always talented Scott McCloud. Made with TLC from scratch, this browser is open source, making everything that’s wonderful about it available to everyone and anyone to build upon. So what does Chrome have to offer? It’d be easier if I just tried listing what it hasn’t innovated and improved upon! But for a rundown on why this has everyone’s attention, hit the jump and continue reading.

Okay, so there’s a lot going on with Chrome, and they’re all covered in what has quickly become my favorite new medium for product descriptions - a comic book! So while you should absolutely read it, here’s a brief synopsis of the key features being touted:

Stability
The first neat thing about Chrome is that tabs take precedence. Rather than your browser being based on a window divided by tabs ala Firefox or Internet Explorer 7, Chrome switches it up and puts the tab at the top of the hill. This setup allows for more stability, as each site you’re visiting can be contained as its own process. This provides immediate awesomeness. Example: You’re browsing seven web sites, and one of them crashes on you. In most major browsers, this means your entire browser crashes and you lose ALL of your sites. But with Chrome, if a site hangs up on you, it won’t crash your other activities. This kind of system also equates to better performance, since each website is autonomous and has no bearing on the performance of the other sites you’re viewing. It also mean increased security, since your tabs are effectively sandboxed, keeping them self-contained. So even if there were malicious code running on a site you’re visiting, it won’t have access to your machine or to the other sites you’re viewing.

Speed
As it was just mentioned, the emphasis Chrome gives to tabs means better performance. But Google doesn’t stop there. They’ve had a new Javascript (JS) virtual machine developed for Chrome. It’s called V8, and it runs through JS up to 10 times faster than FireFox 3. This provides a huge boost in speed, as most online applications use a ton of Javascript (such as web-based mail).

Search and User Experience
So Chrome has this thing called an omnibox. It’s what you would recognize as an Address Bar - the line where you type in the address of the website you want to visit. But the omnibox has been beefed up a bit to provide automatic suggestions while you type in what you want to view. These suggestions are based not only on live searches, but also on your browsing history. On top of that, it’ll also keep track of what sites you tend to search the most frequently. So if you’re a nut for Amazon, you could go to the omnibox and begin to type “Amazon.” But rather than even finish typing it out, just hit the tab button. This cues the omnibox to pull up your most popular search engine that starts with the letters you typed. So type in “A”, hit tab, and you’re presented with the ability to search Amazon’s site right there in the omnibox. Pretty nifty stuff.

Security
Chrome’s security measures are so well articulated in their PR comic that I’d feel ashamed spending this time paraphrasing all of the great information it provides. Still, what’s important to know is that each site you visit is self-contained (or “sandboxed”), preventing it from communicating with other sites you’re browsing or from any other process running on your machine. Chrome also communicates with Google, where it pulls in a constantly updated list of scam sites, helping protect you from the latest threats.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. For more details about the RIDICULOUS amount of kickassery happening with Chrome, please enjoy the comic and educate yourself on why this is such a big deal. Then download it.