New Browser in Town! Google Chrome

Here come the big boys! Yes, Google are entering the browser market. They're calling it Google Chrome and the beta version is available for download now at http://www.google.com/chrome

The story behind it: well if you've got time you can read Google's comic book story detailing the background and how their browser will work. In summary, the plan is to design a brand-new browser made for today's market of users, with the introduction of IM, YouTube, Facebook etc this has changed the way we interact, and this is an attempt to build a browser around our new demanding requirements.

First impressions, I like it, but beware it's in beta and it looks like there's still a lot of work to do. The basics all work fine, but currently there's no way of adding plug-ins like the Google Toolbar or any others for that matter. No choice of colours, skins, fancy icons. But you know what? It doesn't seem to bother me too much.

The biggest difference I see is that each window/tab is actually its own process. If one of your windows/tabs freezes, you don't lose all your other sessions. You have your very own Task Manager, where you can see exactly what resources are being consumed and, best of all, you can kill individual windows. I can recall many an occasion of IE or Firefox crashing due to a single window - and that really did tick me off.


The other cool thing I've found is the homepage, which basically shows a mini copy of your most visited sites, and on the left you can search your history, bookmarks and recently closed tabs appear. Take a look at the image, it's much easier to see what I mean.

You can also move the tabs around by a simple drag and drop or even pop them in or out of a window, pretty cool.

Startup time is very quick, probably because it doesn't have to load any plug-ins, and of course a lot of very good Google code no doubt.

In terms of browsing experience and speed, niceeeee - pages load very quickly and it seems to handle everything well. Plus, there are some cool security features you'll no doubt come across while using it. I like it.

What I cannot work out is how this links to Google's idea of a new experience with the new demands of today's surfer, but maybe time will tell.

It's a very good start and I think I'll be using it as much as I can. No doubt more functions will be added over time, and hopefully it will integrate closely with other Google products. Considering I'm already a user of Google Email, Calendar, Documents, Bookmarks, Notepad, Pages, Reader, Maps, Picasa, Froogle, YouTube, Blogger and Photos how could I not uptake another Google product!

Another company that should be paying me :-)