the reflexions insider

As just about everyone has already heard, Google has released its own open source web browser called Google Chrome. The open source community project is called Chromium. With a powerhouse like Google behind it, will this be a significant challenge to Internet Explorer and will it change how we use the internet? We won’t know for quite a while, but we can gain some insight by looking at Google’s motivation and the technologies they choose to incorporate.

With Mozilla’s Firefox being open source and having a few years of maturity behind it, why didn’t Google simply contribute code to the project?  One reason is Firefox’s focus on streamlining basic web browsing while Chrome’s focus is on richer web applications.  Google’s view of the web is one of increasingly complicated client-server applications.  They see a gradual paradigm shift in the internet, which they are happy to help grow, but which would require a web browser more dedicated to the task.

Another reason for starting from scratch might be one of control.  While it is open source, Chrome’s direction is effectively controlled by Google.  They are the primary developers and any project forks would get only a fraction of Google’s visibility with the public.  The extent to which Chrome will allow plugins, for example, which Firefox greatly supports, is still questionable.  Among the more popular Firefox extensions are things like ad blockers, which of course cut into Google’s primary revenue stream.

Google’s focus on web application performance and security are demonstrated in Chrome’s features.  The browser is built with a custom user interface and new JavaScript runtime environment while leveraging the WebKit rendering engine, which is also used by the Safari and Konqueror web browsers.  Initial user feedback indicates JavaScript runs very fast.  A critical difference from current versions of IE and Firefox is sandboxing, with each tab running in a separate process.  This protects each page a person is viewing from bringing down the whole browser or attempting to access other tabs.  A built-in task manager allows users to monitor each process and memory consumption.  Of course it also includes other features becoming common elsewhere, such as blacklisting of phishing sites and privacy mode.

Overall Google Chrome isn’t yet anything revolutionary.  Firefox developers are working on a new high-performance JavaScript engine for their browser.  And IE 8 promises to have each tab operate in a separate instance of the browser executable.  So Google isn’t changing the entire game, just adding more focus to web applications.  The next few years may bring much faster, and therefore more robust, dynamic web sites with Google’s help.

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