Google Creates Internet Browser to Take on Microsoft

[Mels_Smileys45]

Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., owner of the most popular Internet search engine, will offer its own free Web browsing software to challenge Microsoft Corp.

The browser, known as Chrome, will be available as a test version for download tomorrow in more than 100 countries, Mountain View, California-based Google said today in a blog post. The software is designed to isolate flawed Web pages so users can close them without shutting down the entire browser.

Google is battling Microsoft for customers who use a browser for tasks such as e-mail, calendars and word processing, applications that have traditionally been handled with software stored on a computer. A Web browser could help Google lure users to its programs and search engine, said analyst Roger Kay.

``This gives Google another opportunity to protect its flank and to create a new branding position,'' said Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates in Wayland, Massachusetts. ``The browser is a broader platform than they currently have.''

The market for Web-based software may reach $160 billion by 2011, including revenue from advertising, Merrill Lynch & Co. said in a May report.

``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,'' said the Google blog post, credited to Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management, and Linus Upson, engineering director.

Market Share

Microsoft's Internet Explorer has about 72 percent of the Web browsing market, followed by Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox with 20 percent and Apple Inc.'s Safari with 6.4 percent, according to research firm Net Applications of Aliso Viejo, California.

Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, released a new version of Internet Explorer last week for testing. The software lets users control whether it saves the sites they've visited.

Mozilla, also based in Mountain View, said last week it extended an agreement through 2011 to keep Google as its default search engine. The company is owned by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation.

Like Firefox, Google plans to release Chrome as open-source software, meaning programmers can edit the code and add their own features.

Google fell $10.49, or 2.2 percent, to $463.29 on Aug. 29 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares have declined 33 percent this year.


Bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aD3Qd1XvHU.g&refer=home)

[Christoph]

an here comes the download Link, Mel! :
http://www.google.com/chrome/

P.S.: Fast as Hell!!!!

[Mels_Smileys45]

an here comes the download Link, Mel! :
http://www.google.com/chrome/

P.S.: Fast as Hell!!!!


Yeah, Ive been test driving this thing today. This thing is very fast. Downright scary fast! I think this will be the best browser for some time. Its about time a team rebuilt the concept from the floor up. The future? Chrome!

[mountain_rage]

Wonder if it will cut more into Mozilla's user base than Microsoft's. If it does I could see Mozilla switching to a variation based of the chrome source. That could be an interesting developement in itself.

I like how every page is separated as its own process, so if one page crashes the browser keeps on working. A

[evilmegaman]

oh snap it's out? sweet. I'll give it a go right now :)


I'm digging the idea of separate processes for separate tabs. and when you close them it doesn't leave memory fragments all over the place. cuz over time, firefox slows down to a halt. which is a big problem. can't wait to try it *installs*

[Feather]

I dont like betas will wait for full release.

[mountain_rage]

Feather, this isn't the same as a Microsoft beta. If you are happy with a Microsoft release than this should be far enough along developement for you.

[Mels_Smileys45]

Thats for sure. This Chrome is simply too amazing already

[Feather]

Ok I am typing from chrome now. it is fast but having hard time adjusting to set up.

also it wont block these google ads. I have not seen ads in over a year

[Signa]

I'm so happy with FF I dont feel compelled to even try it :P

[mfgbypooter]

Meh, the novelty has already worn off.

So is it a browser or a bowser?

I vote greyhound, its fast but its still a dog.

*

[Potato]

Wonder if it will cut more into Mozilla's user base than Microsoft's. If it does I could see Mozilla switching to a variation based of the chrome source. That could be an interesting developement in itself.

I like how every page is separated as its own process, so if one page crashes the browser keeps on working. A

This is exactly what some of us were discussing at work today.

I think IE users are less likely to be out downloading new browsers for fun than FF users are.
And I think IE users are less likely to change their default browser than FF users are.



edit: From p2pc: http://www.p2pconsortium.com/index.php?showtopic=16530&hl=

[mountain_rage]

Unless people really spread the word about Chrome I don't think it will take up much of the IE market share. If it is more secure than IE, techies might install it in office equipment, then you might start to see it replace IE.

Consortium post doesn't surprise me, thats how Google makes allot of their money. The information is appreciated anyway. Their desktop search, gmail etc all gather some information about the user. They have been pretty good from what I can tell at not associating the information to specific users. For now I'm alright with using their products, that could change however.

[N Fiddledog]

I tried to play the game, but started to read the terms of agreement, and there was some pretty questionable stuff there as far as the kind of control Google maintained over what you do, and how they watch you do it. Nevertheless I figured that might just be for special services you could opt out of, so I accepted the terms and continued on.

So I'm installing merrily away, and all of a sudden all these warnings start popping up from my startup manager asking if I want to accept all this stuff being written to my registry and such.

I just wanted to play with a new browser. I wasn't looking for a new "Big Brother" (no other browser had demanded this from me when I installed), so I declined. The Chrome install window disappeared, but something continued to download.

I never did get Chrome, but now my firewall pops up announcements from time to time saying Google wants to access the internet.

OK, so based on that I would advise this. If you don't want a bunch of curious stuff installed to your startup without which the browser won't work you may be dissatisfied with this, and do better waiting for Firefox, or Opera to add whatever little special doodads Chrome might offer.

[evilmegaman]

People are so paranoid. I'm sorry, but seriously, you guys are so suspicious of it like its out to get you. it's just a beta software. it's not the man trying to bring you down. christ

[Mels_Smileys45]

Im starting to find a few bugs myself. After a bit the browser can slow down to a crawl, no idea why. Its not memory usage. BETA! As far as adding crap to start up, I opted out of that shite. Since this is BETA they want you to report the bugs. I did not notice much else, at least not anything other browsers also install.


Perhaps Im having bugs now because I didn't let Google instal anything I didn't like. Start up blockers are great.

[N Fiddledog]

People are so paranoid. I'm sorry, but seriously, you guys are so suspicious of it like its out to get you. it's just a beta software. it's not the man trying to bring you down. christ

Whatever. People are going to do what works best for them. Being paranoid is what works best for me.

I'm not going to think badly of anybody who doesn't think caution is necessary. I'm just saying if you do, you can expect a lot of stuff to be written to your startup.

Edit

I don't understand Mel's. I didn't click the box to opt in, yet I still got warnings from my startup manager stuff was being installed there once the install began. Did I miss something?

[mountain_rage]

I've checked my processes, start up and with hijack this and I see nothing from Google. So I think I feel comfortable using it.

[Mels_Smileys45]

Whatever. People are going to do what works best for them. Being paranoid is what works best for me.

I'm not going to think badly of anybody who doesn't think caution is necessary. I'm just saying if you do, you can expect a lot of stuff to be written to your startup.

Edit

I don't understand Mel's. I didn't click the box to opt in, yet I still got warnings from my startup manager stuff was being installed there once the install began. Did I miss something?

Not sure. The only other thing I caught at start up was wanting to launch auto updates, nothing else. What is strange is that I went over my parents and tried Chrome on their crummy computer, it did okay even with only 128M of RAM, but the GUI is different from mine, just slightly. On their install there is no Google search bar and on my browser there is a Google bar on the start up page. Anyone else have this?

[Mels_Smileys45]

Chrome tops IE, Firefox in Acid3 test


Google's Chrome browser is outperforming the latest "stable" builds of both Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7 in the popular Acid3 test. The Acid test, for those who do not know, tests how well a browser complies with a given set of Web standards. While all three browsers pass the Acid2 test, Chrome currently clocks in at 78 out of 100 on Acid3, while Firefox and IE7 stand at 71 and 14 respectively. The only release quality build to beat Chrome is Opera, which scores an 83.

Even though Google has the stable builds edged out, we have to remember that Chrome is still in development, where it is topped by a number of other "unstable," development builds, including Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 (85), Opera (91), and Safari 4 (100). It is interesting that the Safari 4 Developer Preview performs so much better than Chrome, given that they are both built on Apple's WebKit framework.

Whenever a new browser or an update to a browser is released, one of the first things that techies tend to look at is how it fares on the Acid test. The latest iteration of the test, Acid3, is the hardest yet and no "stable" browser builds have achieved a 100 out of 100 on the test, although the Safari 4 Developer Preview has.

Passing the Acid3 test is an important goal for browser developers and it's great to see that Chrome is performing so well on its first attempt.

Update:
A reader, Benjamin, writes in saying that under Vista SP1, Chrome shows scores ranging from 74 to 79 on the Acid3 test. Running it again right now, the test showed a score of a 79. Some of the initial variability could have been due to the servers for the Acid3 test being hammered as a result of Chrome's release.

Cnet (http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10030962-2.html)

[w31n3r]

it is faster, and i like the minimalistic, no bull$hit design. putting tabs on the title bar was a stroke of pure genius. only google could have the balls and confidence not to shout out their brand from the title bar and actually make it useful by doing away with it altogether! looking at the screen real estate it freed up, i can't believe no one thought of this before. 10/10 for design.

memory footprint is a tad more for me though once you have multiple tabs, 11tabs on FF shows about 93MB against 134MB on chrome. and i think they can improve on the tab management front a bit too. i'm not happy with the way opening more tabs shrinks them to the point they're not recognisable anymore. also wish tabs could be dragged onto the bookmark bar. in fact tab drag and drop seems to be limited to just rearranging and opening them in a new window. if you're lazy like me, it's easier to drag a tab to a relevant folder in bookmarks.

like feather, i haven't seen ads in a while, so it's irritating. also can't surf without my mouse gestures. luckily it's supposed to be open source so i'm guessing there'll be extensions soon. basically i think google has a winner on it's hands considering this is just a beta. it's bound to get better. my only concern is on the privacy front...


p.s. just realised you can dynamically rearrange the size of the "Quick Reply" box used here for making posts using chrome. not sure what use that is, but...cool!

[Spyder810]

I tried to play the game, but started to read the terms of agreement, and there was some pretty questionable stuff there as far as the kind of control Google maintained over what you do, and how they watch you do it. Nevertheless I figured that might just be for special services you could opt out of, so I accepted the terms and continued on.

So I'm installing merrily away, and all of a sudden all these warnings start popping up from my startup manager asking if I want to accept all this stuff being written to my registry and such.

I just wanted to play with a new browser. I wasn't looking for a new "Big Brother" (no other browser had demanded this from me when I installed), so I declined. The Chrome install window disappeared, but something continued to download.

I never did get Chrome, but now my firewall pops up announcements from time to time saying Google wants to access the internet.

OK, so based on that I would advise this. If you don't want a bunch of curious stuff installed to your startup without which the browser won't work you may be dissatisfied with this, and do better waiting for Firefox, or Opera to add whatever little special doodads Chrome might offer.

I believe googleupdater is your problem. I've read that it doesn't uninstall with the products for some reason.

Edit: Also it will be listed under startup in msconfig.

[Mord_Sith]

Great... another browser to bugtest webpages in... it's the browser wars mark 2...

[Spyder810]

Great... another browser to bugtest webpages in... it's the browser wars mark 2...

It runs on webkit the same engine that runs safari, so there isn't any extra to test.

[evilmegaman]

I noticed one semi-stupid design decision.


so when you click back on a page and in any other browser it would say "do you want to resend this information? y/n"

In Chrome it's a big long paragraph that tells you to click refresh and explaining the entire thing like anyone is going to read that. it doesn't make it that obvious to click refresh.


then a few bugs with displaying some text on webpages. and some forms are displayed oddly



but the rest is pretty slick :)

[Mels_Smileys45]

it is faster, and i like the minimalistic, no bull$hit design. putting tabs on the title bar was a stroke of pure genius. only google could have the balls and confidence not to shout out their brand from the title bar and actually make it useful by doing away with it altogether! looking at the screen real estate it freed up, i can't believe no one thought of this before. 10/10 for design.

memory footprint is a tad more for me though once you have multiple tabs, 11tabs on FF shows about 93MB against 134MB on chrome. and i think they can improve on the tab management front a bit too. i'm not happy with the way opening more tabs shrinks them to the point they're not recognisable anymore. also wish tabs could be dragged onto the bookmark bar. in fact tab drag and drop seems to be limited to just rearranging and opening them in a new window. if you're lazy like me, it's easier to drag a tab to a relevant folder in bookmarks.

like feather, i haven't seen ads in a while, so it's irritating. also can't surf without my mouse gestures. luckily it's supposed to be open source so i'm guessing there'll be extensions soon. basically i think google has a winner on it's hands considering this is just a beta. it's bound to get better. my only concern is on the privacy front...


p.s. just realised you can dynamically rearrange the size of the "Quick Reply" box used here for making posts using chrome. not sure what use that is, but...cool!


It is so minimal in the gui department its hard to tell what this browser can actually do functionally wise. I here there are lots of features but you have to know how to use short cuts to make them work. Im guessing there is something in the works for the final version to make them more accessible without having to hunt down a web page to explain them.


Ive noticed with some sites like youtube the browser slows down to a snails pace after a few videos have been watched. Anyone seeing any results like this? I can't use Chrome until this is fixed. I'm only using it for my Ebaying at the moment but...even then, if I load a bunch of pages with lots of pics the browser starts to stutter and becomes almost unusable. It could be how I modded the install though...not sure at this point.

I will be glad to see a final as its expected to be even faster! Its still hard to say good bye to Firefox. Its been great but product loyalty holds no place in the PC world IMO.

[Feather]

God I fucking hate when google installs that updater with no notice. chrome hide the mother fucker in documentandsetting/localsettings/applicationdata/google/googleupdater with no fucking uninstall

[Mels_Smileys45]

God I fucking hate when google installs that updater with no notice. chrome hide the mother fucker in documentandsetting/localsettings/applicationdata/google/googleupdater with no fucking uninstall


Doesnt everything istall updaters? I choose to not have it start up so no worries here. Do you have a Startup monitor (http://www.mlin.net/StartupMonitor.shtml) feather? Everyone should have that

[infoseeker]

nice and damn fast

its really nice for a beta-- looking forward for a final version

using chrome browser--- bugs found already (some)


type url add bar of your chrome--

* about:memory
* about:stats
* about:network
* about:internets
* about:histograms
* about:dns
* about:cache
* about:plugins
* about:version

Just type it and see what happens!

evil:% <---
using chrome browser

this is hot browser :icon_scra (no) <<----- click that

[evilmegaman]

infoseeker, way too far man. I lost some good porn streaming with that D:. I only had to hover my mouse


did i mention it was a porn filled with boobs and vaginas? well yes. yes it was. boob and vagina ville episode 3 scene 14

[Mucci Man]

...

What's with the elephant stereotype.... dude?

[evilmegaman]

What's with the elephant stereotype.... dude?



well they're a lot better than asses...

[mountain_rage]

Just noticed it grays out any of the text that isn't the homepage in the address bar, nice touch.

[Mels_Smileys45]

There are some really nice tricks to Chrome.

I like this one. Say youve been surfing awhile and can't remember where you saw something you now want to browse. All you need to do is type into the address bar any term related to that page, anything on the page in question that you can remember, and Chrome will use your cache to bring the page back up! Neat!

[Mels_Smileys45]

10 Features of Google Chrome (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xlh8gSF_hhE)

[mfgbypooter]

Chrome, the new fanboy app.

*

[Mels_Smileys45]

Chrome, the new fanboy app.

*

Who needs to fanboi an app with really great ideas? In a year every other browser will look just like Chrome and use all its great innovations.


Chrome, the new app haters love to dump on. Its amazing to me how people love to find a corporation or app to dump on. I guess Google is the new MS to many haters.

I never could figure out this mentality.

I personally think its really amazing, especially for a BETA release. I like minimal and FF forgot about that aspect long ago. It has become too bloated fuctionally with add ons that could be executed in a much more simply manner. It seems a lot of people can't be bothered to learn how to adapt to advanced wed design tech.


All that being said, I am currently back using FF until the final release comes out. I have found that some web pages cause Chrome to slow way down. The final version is expected to be even faster than it already is and the web bugs should be eliminated after the test ends. At that time I will dump fanboi FF altogether.

As Ive said many times, product loyalty has no purpose when it comes to apps. I use what functions best and does so in the most brilliant manner. On final release I fully expect that to be chrome for the PC. Tie to wait and see.


Its just exciting to me when I get to try something new.

[Mels_Smileys45]

Less than a week after the release of Google (NSDQ:GOOG)'s new Web browser Chrome, security researchers detected a buffer overflow vulnerability that could enable remote attackers to completely take control of a user's computer.

The detected buffer overflow vulnerability, deemed critical by security experts, is the result of a boundary error in the handling of the "Save As" function. If a user saves a Web page serving malicious content, the program could cause a stack-based overflow error, which could open the door for remote hackers to unleash malicious code on a user's machine.

Remote attackers could then exploit the flaw by constructing a specially crafted Web page infused with malicious code. The attacker could then entice a victim to open and then save the infected page, which would subsequently download malicious code onto the victim's computer and give the attacker complete access to the affected system.

Chrome's latest buffer overflow vulnerability is one of about half a dozen errors detected in the newly released beta Web browser, about half of which allow for remote code execution, experts say. Another vulnerability, discovered shortly after the browser's release Tuesday, included a carpetbombing glitch that stemmed from a fundamental flaw in the underlying user agent Safari 3.1.

However experts say that several Chrome beta version flaws are anticipated and will likely be worked out with the final version as the browser is subsequently tested.

"I think for a new product like Chrome, it doesn't concern me much that they're discovering the number of vulnerabilities and the details are getting out there. That's the point of beta, especially open source beta," said John Bambenek, handler for the SANS Internet Storm Center. "I think that the people who are really into getting exploits on a number of machines are not interested in messing with Chrome until (Google) gets some distribution out there."

"If it's not public information, the hackers don't have it either," he added.

And despite some errors that could lead to remote exploitation, experts say that because the browser is still in beta and not yet widely adopted, security threats for most users for the time being remains small.

"I don't think the consumer impact is very large yet," said Bambenek, "but that could change very quickly."

story:icon_comp (http://www.crn.com/security/210500382)

[go4desperado]

hey!!! did neone chkd out,, the newly launched VideoChat is not supported by Google's Chrome,,, ooops