Google turned 10 this week, from a simple university search project to a 20.000 employees strong company. Google also seem to have come full circle by introducing their own (open source) browser this week, Google Chrome:

Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier. Read about why we built a browser.

They introduced Chrome using a cartoon, which not only acts as a clever viral marketing tactic (accidently leaked, oRLY?), but it also explains why they released their own browser and how it tries to improve the internet experience for people, making complex information simple.

On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff – the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

Chrome is based on WebKit, the same HTML engine powering Apple’s Safari browser, and a new V8 JavaScript engine. While the last couple of years we’ve seen browsers adhere more and more to WebStandards (especially improved CSS support, finally in IE8), we might get confronted again with JavaScript incompatibilities (client-side storage, text-node serialization, timer delay,…) due to these new JavaScript engines being introduced. Although these JavaScript engines do support the ECMA language standards, they do a lot more under the hood to improve JavaScript performance.

And you have to wonder, with a User-Agent string like Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13, is the User-Agent still useful?

Google doesn’t make any money out of their search, nor with this browser, they make money with advertisements. So the question begs itself, will we see adverts in Chrome? Will it be limited to Google Search? Questions being answered on Matt Cutt’s blog, but you have to wonder, even if you are using an other search provider, they could still pick up anything you do in Chrome, what you’re searching for, what you click on, as if you were using their search. Not really, it is open source, and it is ‘easy’ to see what exactly it is doing.

I’ve been using it at work this week, and I’m glad my stuff still works (contrary to the new IE8 beta 2, which I’ll need some more time investigating). I like most of its chrome’s aesthetics, its simplicity, but I really don’t like the baby blue though. The incognito mode looks a little bit nicer. I like the task manager and ‘stats for nerds‘, and the WebKit based dev tools. Also try about:memory, about:stats, about:histograms, about:internets, and about:crash in the ‘Omnibar’.

I’m also amazed at how Windows app development has stagnated so much since, well, ever. I mean, Chrome doesn’t look like a Windows app, same as Apple Safari doesn’t look like a Windows app, and I mean that in a good sense. Same reason I like AIR-based apps which don’t look like drab Windows apps.

I wasn’t using Safari all that much on Windows, but I might use Chrome a bit more (even when the Mac version is released, so I can use it at home), though Firefox (and the upcoming 3.1) will still remain my main browser. And that always has been the main problem. Sometimes, for some people, just good is good enough. That’s why we’re still stuck with lots of IE6 visitors. But the might of Google may well change things, by paying hardware vendors (the HPs, Dells in the world) to have Chrome as the default browser on their hardware, same way they do to have their browser toolbar included.

The Mac and Linux versions are in the works. The cartoon talks about extension, but currently they don’t offer any.

Google Chrome is another option for people. It forces the other browser developers to take notice. Though it looks like we’re heading for another browser war this summer (hey, I’m down under), this one will take the web forward. Progression is good, and we really need a big leap now. Bring ‘em on, all at once.

So, who is today’s startup Google, and where will they be in 10 years time?

PS: Two weeks ago Microsoft released their IE8 beta 2 to the broader public, as well as Apple releasing Safari 4 beta for developers, and Firefox has a 3.1 version available too. Good times!

Category: Javascript

Author: JJ Halans

Tags: Google, Microsoft