Google aims to shine with Chrome

By TAN KIT HOONG
In.Tech was invited to Google's regional office last week to get a first-hand look at the much-hyped Chrome web browser. Here's what we found out.

GOOGLE launched its browser last week, called Chrome, which generated more buzz online than is typical for any other Google product thus far.

The Internet search giant claims that Chrome is built from the ground up to provide faster and safer browsing while being more unobtrusive in its interface.

Hype aside, Chrome does feature several innovations not currently found in any other browser — for one thing, when a user opens a tab in Chrome, each tab runs as a separate process.

Chrome's multi-process approach, in which each process has its own dedicated memory and copy of global data structures, requires more memory up front, but is said to eliminate memory fragmentation which can eat up more memory in prolonged use which is often the case in single-threaded browsers.

This multi-process architecture also means that should a misbehaving site cause the browser to crash, a user only needs to kill the offending tab without affecting the other open tabs, whereas a crash on other single-process browsers would mean the whole browser shuts down, tabs and all.

Chrome also features a custom JavaScript virtual machine developed by the V8 company in Denmark which Google claims is faster and handles web applications much faster than other browsers.

Not to be confused with Java the programming language, JavaScript is a scripting language developed by Sun Microsystems and Netscape to make animated and more dynamic webpages.

One of the most common uses of JavaScript is the mouseover effect where a popup appears when a mouse cursor hovers over a word. The scripting language is also commonly used in drop-down menus.

Stepping up security

Possibly more important than whizz bang features, the developers of Chrome have also ensured that each open tab is not only in its own separate process, but is also sandboxed from every other open tab in the browser.

The tabs in Chrome have very low permission levels, so they can compute but can't write to a user's hard drive or read files from sensitive areas in machines (such as to their documents or the desktop).

Separate running processes also mean that should any malware be running in a particular tab, it would only affect that tab and closing it would effectively eliminate the problem immediately.

To further enhance security, browser plugins like QuickTime and Java also run in their own separate processes as well, thus isolating them from the rest of the page and enhancing the page's security and stability.

More features, less intrusive

Under the hood, Chrome is based on the open-source WebKit rendering engine developed by Apple, which is also the basis for the Safari browser running on the Apple iPhone and iPod touch.

According to Linus Upson, engineering director in charge of Chrome at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, California, WebKit was chosen because the team felt that it not only met their needs, but since it's based on one of the two most popular renedering engines on the Net (the other being Gecko, which is the basis of Firefox) it would reduce problems for developers who have to code for multiple browsers.

Whatever innovative features there are under the hood, the Chrome interface itself is made to be deliberately simple — icons and navigation buttons are kept to a minimum to give the user as much viewing space for a web page as possible.

Chrome also ditches the separate address and search bars in favour of a single unified address bar which the Google team call the Omnibox.

The Omnibox handles more than just URLs as it offers users suggestions based on their browsing history, popularity, bookmarks and previous searches. The browser supports the same plugins as Mozilla's Firefox and users who install the browser will automatically be able to take advantage of any Firefox plugins like Adobe Flash, QuickTime, Adobe PDFor Java which are already installed on their computer.

However, Chrome does not currently support Firefox's extensions nor are there any similar way to extend the browser's functionality. However, Upson said that the Chrome team are currently working on supporting extensions while keeping the browser secure.

Competition

Chrome's introduction sees Google entering yet another area of the Web currently dominated by Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox.

Considering that Google is one of the biggest supporters of Firefox, it's a little strange that the company decided to introduce its own web browser, effectively competing against a browser that the company has been supporting for a while now.

''We have enormous respect for Mozilla and we continue to support Mozilla both technically and financially. We really want to see Firefox be successful.

''It's better to have two competing open source browsers because in that way, it will spur on innovation — they will build something we think is great and we'll adopt it in our next version, or we will build something they like and they are free to integrate it into their version,'' Upson said.

Upson likened choosing a web browser to buying a car, where consumers are given a wide choice of vehicles and brands to choose from, creating a healthy market of competition and innovation as a result.

On the flipside, more people using Chrome means that Google will gather yet more information about what consumers are doing online, which can only benefit the company's already strong lead in the global search market.