Search engine giant Google (GOOG) today announced its Web browser, dubbed Chrome, is available in beta version in more than 100 countries. Google claims Chrome is faster and better at handling complicated Web applications (that include rich media elements) than browsers originally created many years ago to simply access Web sites.
First available for Windows, the firm also plans to launch versions for Mac and Linux computing platforms. The search engine giant has drawn on the experiences of its kingpin video-sharing Web site YouTube, which like many similar and smaller sites, has taken fat content and interactivity to a new level.
Chrome will compete with such current browsers as Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer, Firefox and Mozilla. Google believes that starting from the ground up gives Chrome an advantage in dealing with increasingly interactive Web applications and tasks.
“Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there,” said the company in its official blog. “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.”
With that in mind, Google says that by keeping each tab in an isolated "sandbox", it was able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. The company claims 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 it claims “aren't even possible in today's browsers.”
The presence of the powerful V8 engine under Chrome’s hood makes it unclear whether it’s best described as a Web browser or is more of a Web computing system.
Google pledged to make Chrome even faster and more robust, but did not provide timing or a timeline for these enhancements.
