“The browser landscape is highly competitive, but people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips, respects their personal choices about how they want to browse and, more than any other browsing technology, puts them in control of their personal data online,” Internet Explorer General Manager Dean Hachamovitch said in a statement.
Microsoft IE 8 logo

Just last week, Microsoft released the second public beta for its IE 8 browser.
(Credit: Microsoft)

Hopefully for Redmond, though, it recognizes this as far more than an attack on Internet Explorer 8. Google was already a big supporter and partner of Mozilla. If it really just wanted a better browser, it would have just stepped up its investment in Firefox.

In Google’s own words, Chrome is as much about being a platform for Web applications as it is a means for viewing Web pages.

“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,” Google said on the company’s official blog.

Although today one needs Windows to run Chrome (Mac and Linux versions are coming soon), it is not hard to see how Chrome is a threat to Microsoft’s operating system dominance.

Imagine, in the not too distant future, a Linux-based machine with Chrome and lots of Chrome apps. Hmm…That’s starting to sound like a pretty big threat to Microsoft indeed.

That said, people have predicted the browser would overtake the operating system since the Netscape days and the OS has remained important. The key question for Microsoft is can it create enough experiences that are better outside of a browser/Web app engine to maintain the OS as not just relevant, but worth an extra $100 in the cost of a PC.

The competition, though, is not limited to PCs. A more competitive browser-as-platform from Google could mean more headaches for Microsoft on the mobile front as well. Microsoft is already playing catch-up in the mobile browser arena as it tries to take on the iPhone’s Safari browser. Microsoft has promised to have a version of Internet Explorer 6 on Windows Mobile by year’s end, but it is unclear how close that will get the company to its already existing competition, let alone new entrants.

Here’s my take on the winners and losers when Chrome ships in a final version:

Google: Winner. As Google applications grow more complex and more laden with Javascript, they need a browser that’s tuned to handle these specific applications, with good process isolation and a fast Javascript execution engine. Expect Google to offer direct download links for Chrome from the home pages for applications like GMail and Google Docs. They don’t need to take over a huge share of the browser market to win: they need to make their own applications rock-solid for increased business use. To that end, we’ll see Chrome promoted as a single-site browser that you run alongside your regular browser, rather than as a straight replacement.

Microsoft: Neutral, potential winner. Chrome may well be technically superior to IE8 when they both ship – but in terms of market share, that won’t matter. We already have a browser that’s technically superior to the Microsoft offerings; in fact, we have several. They haven’t succeeded in seriously diminishing IE’s crushing market share in most niches. Looguide at the fact that 25% of IE users are on IE6, you can see the overwhelming advantage that being part of Windows XP gives to that browser. Microsoft could even win from the release of Chrome, if Google ties the browser too closely with their other offerings and Microsoft can interest antitrust regulators in taguide another run at the “bundling” theory.

Mozilla/Firefox: Loser. Yeah, we’ll see plenty of rhetoric about a rising tide and all boats, about Google continuing to support the Mozilla Foundation, and so on. But who are the most likely users to switch to a new browser with fancy technology? Those who have a history of doing that: Firefox users. Especially if Chrome really does offer a compelling memory management story they’ll make inroads with users who are sick of the Firefox RAM footprint.

Opera: Loser. Opera has been a favorite of the standards-compliant community all along, but with its WebKit basis, Chrome should be able to beat Opera on this front. Combine that with free and open-source, and Chrome is likely to siphon users – and money – away from Opera.

Apple/Safari – Neutral. Safari users are concentrated on the Mac (despite Apple’s attempts to push it on to Windows), and by and large they’re Mac loyalists. No browser from another company is going to tempt them away, especially when it slaps them in the face by being Windows-only in the first release.

Web 2.0 – Winner. Google isn’t the only one out there shipping out a heap of Javascript disguised as a web page. Expect other companies like Zoho to add “works best with Chrome” to their applications, or to have their support people actively recommending it.

Web Standards – Loser. Yeah, WebKit is a great standards-compliant browser. But to the extent that shipping Chrome with Gears baked in can convince developers to target Gears, we have a loss in cross-browser compatibility. Smart developers will gracefully degrade. Run of the mill ones will opt for trying to dictate their users’ browser choices.

FOSS Development Community – Potential winner. With Chrome itself being released as open source code, there’s the potential of reusing some of its features in other projects. But we don’t yet know what license Chrome will be released under, nor do we know how easy it will be to pry out the interesting chunks of code.
hxxp://ostatic.com/172338-blog/google-chrome-winners-and-losers

Though the initial beta release of Chrome runs only on Microsoft’s Windows operating system, Chrome is being seen as yet another sharp Google stick aimed at the Beast of Redmond’s cyclopean eye – an attempt not only to displace Internet Explorer but to disintermediate Windows itself as the platform of choice for running PC software. There is, no doubt, truth to that view, but in this case I think Google is motivated by something much larger than its congenital hatred of Microsoft. It knows that its future, both as a business and as an idea (and Google’s always been both), hinges on the continued rapid expansion of the usefulness of the Internet, which in turn hinges on the continued rapid expansion of the capabilities of web apps, which in turn hinges on rapid improvements in the worguides of web browsers.

To Google, the browser has become a weak link in the cloud system – the needle’s eye through which the outputs of the company’s massive data centers usually have to pass to reach the user – and as a result the browser has to be rethought, revamped, retooled, modernized. Google can’t wait for Microsoft or Apple or the Mozilla Foundation to make the changes (the first has mixed feelings about promoting cloud apps, the second is more interested in hardware than in clouds, and the third, despite regular infusions of Google bucks, lacks resources), so Google is jump-starting the process with Chrome.

Although I’m sure Google would be thrilled if Chrome grabbed a sizable chunk of market share, winning a “browser war” is not its real goal. Its real goal, embedded in Chrome’s open-source code, is to upgrade the capabilities of all browsers so that they can better support (and eventually disappear behind) the applications. The browser may be the medium, but the applications are the message.

Update: Google giveth and Google taketh away – the Chrome site is now down.

Google appears to have soft-launched this site for Google Chrome, its open source browser, which is slated for release on Windows tomorrow.

The site provides the screenshot above, plus a set of demonstration videos that can

* 1 Announcement
* 2 Design
o 2.1 Security
o 2.2 Speed
o 2.3 Stability
o 2.4 User interface
* 3 Testing
* 4 References
* 5 External links

[edit] Announcement

The official announcement was scheduled for September 3, 2008 and was to be sent to journalists and bloggers with a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works 2.5 licensed comic by Scott McCloud explaining the features of and motivations for the new browser.[5] Copies intended for Europe were shipped early and German blogger Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped[6] made a scanned copy of the 38-page comic available on his website after receiving it on September 1, 2008.[7] Google has since made the comic available on Google Books and their site[8] and referenced it on its official blog along with an explanation for the early release.[1]

[edit] Design

[edit] Security

Blacklists

Chrome periodically downloads updates of two blacklists (one for phishing and one for malware) and warns users when they attempt to visit a harmful site. This service is also made available for use by others via a free public API called “Google Safe Browsing API”. In the process of maintaining these blacklists, Google also notifies the owners of listed sites who may not be aware of the presence of the harmful software.[7]

Sandboxing

Each tab in Chrome is sandboxed to “prevent malware from installing itself” or “using what happens in one tab to affect what happens in another”. Following the principle of least privilege, each process is stripped of its rights and can compute but can’t write files or read from sensitive areas (eg documents, desktop), this is similar to “Protected Mode” that is used by Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista. The Sandbox Team is said to have “taken this existing process boundary and made it into a jail”; for example malicious software running in one tab is unable to sniff credit card numbers, interact with the mouse or tell “Windows to run an executable on start-up” and will be terminated when the tab is closed. This enforces a simple computer security model whereby there are two levels of multilevel security (user and sandbox) and the sandbox can only respond to communication requests initiated by the user.[7]

Plugins

Plugins such as Adobe Flash Player are typically not standardised and as such cannot be sandboxed like tabs. These often need to run at or above the security level of the browser itself. To reduce exposure to attack, plugins are run in separate processes that communicate with the renderer, itself operating at “very low privileges” in dedicated per-tab processes. Plugins will need to be modified to operate within this software architecture while following the principle of least privilege.[7]

Incognito

Chrome includes an Incognito mode (similar to Safari’s Private Browsing and Internet Explorer 8′s InPrivate) which “lets you browse the web in complete privacy because it doesn

Google Chrome Terms of Service

These Terms of Service apply to the executable code version of Google Chrome. Source code for Google Chrome is available free of charge under open source software license agreements at http://code.google.com/chromium/terms.html.

1. Your relationship with Google

1.1 Your use of Google

So why the mystery? Human error, it appears. According to the official Google blog, “At Google, we have a saying: ‘launch early and iterate.’ While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit ‘send’ a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open-source browser…”

Our previous coverage: Google ‘starting from scratch’ with own browser, Chrome.

Here’s the full announcement, from the Google blog:

A fresh take on the browser

9/01/2008 02:10:00 PM

At Google, we have a saying: “launch early and iterate.” While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit “send” a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.

So why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.

All of us at Google spend much of our time worguide inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinguide about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. 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.

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.

Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today’s complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated “sandbox”, we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We 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.

This is just the beginning — Google Chrome is far from done. We’re releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We’re hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.

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 maguide all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward.

The web gets better with more options and innovation. Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes to maguide the web even better.

So check in again tomorrow to try Google Chrome for yourself. We’ll post an update here as soon as it’s ready.

Posted by Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management, and Linus Upson, engineering director