Tech Talk Google Bets Chrome Will Shine

By STEVEN ROSENBERG

What is Google Chrome?

Developed by Google engineers, the Web browser released to the public Tuesday promises a better, faster and safer Internet-surfing experience.

It’s also a huge smack-down on Microsoft, maker of the Web’s big dog, Internet Explorer, which Chrome can easily replace.

It’s not good news for Mozilla, either. While the nonprofit behind the popular Firefox Web browser just signed a deal with Google to continue the companies’ lucrative practice of sharing search-ad revenue through 2011, a competing browser from Google itself can only mean less money for Mozilla.

Google is already eating into Microsoft’s extremely profitable office-software market with the Web-based Google Docs application suite.

And now a Google-branded browser gives computer users a huge reason to interact even less with Microsoft’s desktop applications.

With rumors breaking on Labor Day about the new Google browser, the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant initially released a 38- page comic book explaining just about every geeky detail of Chrome.

Then in conjunction with a news conference at noon Tuesday, Google Chrome was made available for download.

I immediately grabbed a copy for Windows, the only operating- system Chrome currently runs on.

Google Chrome downloaded very quickly. If anybody can handle massive, server-crushing amounts of traffic for a new, free application, it’s Google.

I clicked the proper icon, and Chrome installed in about a minute.

Google Chrome uses the same WebKit rendering engine — which turns Internet data into viewable Web pages — as Apple’s ultra- quick Safari Web browser. WebKit is supposed to be faster than Mozilla/Firefox’s Gecko engine, and my preliminary tests indicate that Chrome is indeed very fast.

With Chrome, Google is promising a Web surfing experience that should be safer than ever. The browser is designed to prevent outside entities from planting malicious programs — known as “malware” — on your PC.

Chrome does this with a feature called “sandboxing,” by which Web processes are each kept in their own virtual compartment and have no access to the system at large other than that explicitly granted by the user. That means smart users have less to worry about.

And while this can’t eliminate the worst form of Web crime — phishing, in which you are asked on a Web page to provide sensitive information to a rogue site that looks suspiciously like, say, your bank — Google says it’s committed to continually monitoring phishing activity and warning you through the browser when you click on a suspect link.

Like Firefox and Internet Explorer, Google Chrome features tabbed browsing, in which multiple Web pages can be opened in a single browser window. Nothing new there. Chrome does move between tabs very quickly, and those tabs have a much more prominent place in the window than in any other browser.

And when opening up a new, “blank” tab in Chrome, medium-size pictures of your nine most-visited Web pages appear for you to click on immediately. Recent bookmarks appear to the right of that. It’s easy to find your most-visited Web pages.

On the surface, Google Chrome seems simple, almost Spartan in appearance. There aren’t tons of menus. That might frustrate “advanced” users but will be welcomed by average Web surfers.

I don’t think Chrome will stay simple for long. Expect Google to continue tweaking it in the months ahead, adding features and functionality at a rapid pace. Can Firefox and Internet Explorer compete with Chrome? It won’t be easy, but it is possible. It’s hard to keep up with the world’s king of search. And, like it or not, Google’s bold move with Chrome might represent the beginning of a new era on the desktop and the Internet.

Or it could be just another Web browser.

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