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On the 1st of September, Google made an official announcement about its new Open Source project code-named Google Chrome. It sent shockwaves through the tech community and a barrage of rampant speculation over the future of Mozilla Firefox broke out with talk of Google out to hunt the much-loved fox. Mozilla’s CEO, John Lilly, responded (with notable nonchalance) on his blog by saying that comeptition from Google was inevitable given the scope and ambition of the Google operation.

Along side search engines and email clients, web browsers play a vital role in daily Internet usage. The web browser is quite simply the window onto the Web. Until now Google only had an indirect foothold in this huge market through its funding relationship with Firefox. Given that Google’s main competitor Microsoft has been at the forefront of browser application technology from the early days of the Web, there is a clear sense that by building a rival browser, Google is moving ever closer to Internet monopoly. In many ways Firefox has been Google’s guinea pig, a testing ground for the viability of an open source rival to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Google’s relationship with Mozilla may not have been this way from the start, but Google’s decision to release the Chrome source code and the fact that Chrome inherits components from Firefox point to a very calculated move.

Google states that its main approach to building Chrome was to “rethink the browser” and create “a modern platform for web pages and applications” (source). In doing so it claims to have improved speed, responsiveness and functionality across the board. Part of this meant developing new frameworks to power so-called ‘next generation’ web applications - the V8 JavaScript engine is one example of innovation in this project.

So what is Chrome really about? Is it really about technological innovation, or is it a market share strategy through Firefox emulation? And does it live up to its ambitious remit as the browser that will power the ‘next generation’ of Internet interaction? In this review, I take a candid look at the Google Chrome beta release and ask whether this new web browser lives up to the hype. What can Google do that everyone else can’t and has Google laid down the foundations for the definitive Web browser?

Installation

I’m writing this review based on the Chrome Beta release version and I’m using a Windows Vista PC. Downloading the .exe application file is blazingly fast thanks to the mighty Google server farms. Installation is equally as swift. In fact the only ‘difficulty’ I encountered in the entire 3 minute process was importing bookmarks from Firefox. To perform the import Chrome requires you to shut Firefox down. But once the installation was complete and I started Chrome for the first time, I noticed the bookmark import had failed. I was able to remedy this later on by reinitiating the import from within the Chrome control menu.

With the installation complete and a new desktop icon generated, I launched Chrome and the first thing that I noticed was the fast load time. Aside from Chrome, I run Firefox, IE7 and Opera on my system and Chrome outperforms them all. For an in-depth performance analysis of Chrome see the CNET report here.

Features

Unsurprisingly, what you find at the core of Chrome is Google’s strong point: the search engine. We’ve seen the url box take on a more dynamic role in in recent browsers with both Firefox and Opera offering history prompts when you begin typing in the url box. Google takes this a step further by combining user history and real time matches from its search engine. So for example, by typing ‘osl’ in the url box I find a number of near matches of which osliving.com is one of them. Chrome has packed as much user interaction as possible into the url box making it the browser’s centrepiece and focal point.

Other noteworthy features include a new ‘dynamic tab’ system, designed for both ease of use with fade in and fade out effects, but more importantly with a new ‘crash control’ system that puts an end to the is instability of running numerous parallel browser sessions. Each tab is essentially an independant browser iteration. In practice this works very well and Chrome had no trouble dealing with 10 different open tabs.

There’s also a history page that appears at the start of each new browser session or tab iteration. This is very much modeled on the Opera idea but instead of serving as a user generated bookmark page, it lists the pages you visit the most frequently. Again this is Google stripping away a layer of user operation in favour of ‘intutuitive’ automation.

The final two features worth mentioning here are the ‘incognito mode’ and the built in browser security. The incognito mode is an option in the control panel that opens a new browser screen that is not registered in your browser history. Admittedly, this is a feature that will serve only those with things to hide, but I can see its application in public spaces being very beneficial; particularly when it comes to user authentication scripts. In terms of browser security, Chrome comes with a built in pop-up blocker and issues a prompt if it deems a webpage ‘unsafe’ for browsing. The notifications are well integrated in the browsing experience and never feel invasive or persistent as they can do in other browsers.

Design & Usability

First of all a note on the naming of this browser. Chrome. To me chrome is plate metal, metal dyed in a coat of chromium and used to embellish cars, bikes and other objects. What does Google Chrome have to do with shiny alloys? There’s no trace of Mac-style brushed metal, no sign of shiny metallic effects, so the name remains a mystery to me.

Perhaps the most stiking thing about Chrome is its minimal presentation. Although I was aware of Google’s intention to strip the browser down to bare necessities, seeing it in action still took me by surprise. In its default form Chrome really only consists of one thin top navigation bar. There is no bottom status bar, no line of drop down menus or excess buttons. To some extent this can be quite disorientating when switching from Firefox of Internet Explorer, particular when the ‘home’ button has been removed. This is Google’s way of saying that the idea of ‘home’ on the Internet is invariably transient. The Web is in constant flux and we are prey to ‘newisms’ - new sites, new trends, new applications and new browser bookmarks. Google’s answer is to present you with a rolling search history, a sort of behavioural map of your Internet activity.

This is where Chrome departs from the competition. The more you use Chrome, the more the browser learns about your behaviour and serves up recommendatons based on its findings. Although the practicalities and implementation of ‘tacit learning’ remains extremely basic, it is a strong portend of tomorrow’s web technology; and if Chrome takes off in the way Google is hoping, then this could be the first widespread primitive application of Tim Berner-Lee’s Semantic Web.

Final thoughts

So in answer to the main question: is Chrome innovation or emulation? Well obviously it’s a bit of both. For the most part, Chrome can do pretty much what every other browser can do, it just conceals most of the functions and doubles up on operations where possible. It’s main innovation is the application of behavioural mapping, a step towards a browser that ‘thinks’ for itself. For the average user, Chrome will seem like a regression, over-simplistic and largely unhelpful, but that’s a symptom of any paradigm shift. There’s always a period of adjustment to new standards. My feeling is that Chrome is not yet the new standard but a small stepping stone along the way. It has one foot firmly rooted in the traditional idea of what a web browser should be and one foot in the projection of what it might become in the future.

Wheras this new browser itself may not be a revolution, what it has done for Google could well be. It is a clear sign that Google is out to corner as much of the mainstream Web market as possible. Google’s unofficial motto is ‘Do no evil’ and certainly releasing Chrome as an open source product seems to attest to that idea, but make no mistake this is ultimately a business move and a direct challenge to Microsoft - Google’s main rival over the coming decade.

» See the OSLiving Archive entry on Chrome.