Google Chrome, Google's Browser Project
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Think about it. People always make fun of how our computers are thousands and millions of times faster than computers of yore and seem to do basically the same thing... except that my word processor has live spell checking, and so on and so forth. Speed is technology enabling. Being able to add features to your site that won't make it pathetically slow when it would have been previously is huge.
Screw buzzwords, infrastructure is king. You are only as good as what lies beneath you.
I also wonder why the term Chrome was used - for devs (which are a tiny bunch of people), that term refers to the UI of Mozilla based products.
Edit: answering my second question, the term chrome is a general UI term, from before Mozilla. http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/C/chrome.html
However, Google does not have a good track record of delivering product for non-technical end users. GMail, their one succesful homegrown, mass-market, non-search product that I can think of, is a mess (haphazard user interface, no improvement for years, still beta). For such a strategic app, that is worrying.
As for their platform vision, it also seems very scattershot. They have visionary initiatives (GWT, Gears, App Engine, now Chrome) but it seems awfully disjointed with hardly any synergy between these projects.
I think it has yet to be proven that these projects can be integrated into something larger than the sum of its parts. For my money, if they can't do it with Chrome I have no confidence they can do it at all.
They have rewritten the HTML, CSS and JS to make it more hackable for Greasemonkey - and in the process, optimized that HTML, CSS, and JS to reduce number of connections and subsequently load time.
The backend has seen massive scaling. They added POP and IMAP.
I don't know what I would change for GMail. It's a strong email client that gets the job done. I wouldn't consider it "worrying".
I've wanted this for ages with firefox. Each tab runs on it's own?! It's exactly what I've been wanting.
edit: that'll teach me to not read the comic before commenting. It sounds like they're actually using lightweight processes.
Really, this was inevitable. Their whole tabs-as-process thing is too, when you think about it. Just imagine the potential for a browser-as-OS-with-processes-and-everything and how much they must be salivating to get it on devices and desktops NOT running Windows. It's a hell of a trojan horse in their winning battle to make Microsoft irrelevant...
And open source? <3
I haven't... can you elaborate?
I can't speak for Mozilla's collaborative culture (and the fact that Firefox emerged from Netscape means it can't be half-bad), but just on an aesthetic level, WebKit C++ is a lot easier on the eyes than Mozilla. One thing that's interesting about WebKit is that in the last 12 months when I've been pulling upstream changesets from them, I've noticed that they're not afraid to do project-wide renames to keep the code clean. It seems like a small thing, but it's a lot more approachable to see clean C++ that uses namespaces and abstracts away platform differences in a coherent way. Mozilla is full of COM interfaces like
#define NS_IHTML_CSS_STYLE_SHEET_IID \
{0xb5cc4ac0, 0xeab6, 0x11d1, {0x80, 0x31, 0x00, 0x60, 0x08, 0x15, 0x9b, 0x5a}}
class nsIHTMLCSSStyleSheet : public nsIStyleSheet
Could you please explain this too?
I like being able to identify and kill individual tab and plugin processes.
But I don't understand why you can't garbage collect a thread like the presentation seems to say.
If this seems unlikely, think of adding an element to a hash table used by many threads and having to resize it, copying all the old elements to the new one. If you kill the thread in the middle of the resize (which might take a while if it's allocating a lot of memory) then all the other threads that use that hash table will get screwed up.
There's also no good way to tell which memory is being used by which thread. Often the whole point of threads is that they use shared memory; in this case the memory bloat might be _caused_ by a single thread but end up bloating a data structure that is _shared_ by all threads.
By giving each tab its own process, Chrome uses more memory to start out with - each process must have its own data structures for some things which in normal browsers are in shared memory - but hopefully in the long run it will avoid memory leaks.
The hard part is DOM interaction and styling. But as they're using WebKit and are putting a lot of effort into compatibility - this should be a breeze.
The really hard work is support for IE6. 1990s JS assumptions, very bad and inconsistent DOM behaviour, etc.
New, open JS engines with a different take on executing JS (Tamarin, V8) are wonderful news for JS developers everywhere. And consumers too, of course.
I wonder at what point it is justified to return a 'please update your browser, preferrably to one of these: [list of reasonable browsers]', just because of the effort it takes you to keep IE6 compatibility.
Javascript can be enormously faster: compare ActionScript 2.0 and 3.0, which are implementations of ECMAscript (which Javascript is also) in Adobe's Flash.
If Google can basically get these things right - local persistence, speed and animation tools - the Web OS that Microsoft has greatly feared will be finally upon us...
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser...
I can't wait to use it. I'm sick of FF's crap memory footprint and single processes. Bring it.
What struck me is how technical it was (for a comic book quick overview). It's obviously geared towards developers--they really wanted to plant their flag in the sand and say "we're doing this: here is why it is good."
The term "rock star" is way overused in the software field. It's nice to see some developers actually being treated as stars.
Just a tought.
They may as well change the name.
"Several years ago Microsoft had a project code-named Chrome. It was supposed to be a multimedia browser. The project was killed a few weeks away from shipping."
Thank Scott McCloud.
McCloud is to the comic world what Stallman ~ http://www.scottmccloud.com/inventions/inventions.html (Creators bill of rights) and Linus is to the computing world by writing & thinking extensively how to innovate ~ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url?_encodin... and push both the art and science of comics as hard as he can. My favourites include http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-archive.html and all time favourite Monkey Town ~ http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi-17/mi-17.html
1) I know the comic was long, but they explicitly cover their agenda -- they're taking the time and money to make some hard decisions about the browser that really need to be made (or at least investigated), like separate processes per tab / embedded-object, aggressive javascript revisions and embedding features that are relevant to the new world of applications design.
2) Mozilla sending impressions to Google is still money in Google's pocket. Judging from Mozilla's $millions cut, it's handsome change, too. They have no incentive to kill this golden goose.
3) With all due respect to the (tens of?) thousands of people that have contributed to Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox, why should we even care about Mozilla/FF? When the Mozilla codebase was open sourced, it was roughly equivalent to NS6, which was a dog compared to IE (remember why even the majority of geeks was using IE5/5.5? NS4 was an ancient PoS and NS6 was glacially slow and horrendously unpolished). A lot of us only cared about NS because it ran on the open source OSes we preferred to use, and it represented an alternative to the MS-only world we saw coming our way otherwise. I don't see how Webkit isn't better than the Mozilla codebase in any metric you can throw at it.
Conspiracy theorists: Stand down. Sure, a monopolistic Google would be as bad as any other monopoly, but I don't think this is the keystone piece to the formation of the new evil empire.
2)They don't lose any impressions by replacing FF. They just stop paying for them.
3) I agree. But that just means you don't care if they kill FF. Not that they're not.
It's like the problem of too much choice. We all face it. We go to the store and are greeted with 10 slightly different versions of the same product. Mint toothpaste, mint with extra-whitening, mint-flavored baking soda toothpaste. I don't want to buy one that tastes bad. This stuff is going in my mouth 3x a day, after all. So I'm confused and cranky because I just want my normal toothpaste. My brain remembers the box had the certain logo and the certain white swish of box art. Found it! What size, big or small? Done, continue on to shopping decisions I actually want to think about like what's for dinner.
These days, the choice of a browser by 90% of people is the same kind of commodity thought given to toothpaste. They know what they're familiar with. They identify it via the shape and color of the icon, and maybe whether it says "internet" or not.
We've had to take 4 years to push Firefox to ~20% marketshare. Internet Explorer still has 75% total, with 30% of that being IE6. Safari, Opera, and all other browsers squeeze into the rough remaining 5% of the market. Adding YAB to the party won't serve anything except to dilute the last 5% some more.
What we need is not new browsers, OSS or not. We need marketing. Microsoft had easy marketing for IE. An icon on the desktop called "Internet".
We need Apple-style ads with Jason Long as Firefox and John Hodgeman as Internet Explored. Boil the message down to the barest essentials of the message and make it as clear to the "other 90%" as the Big Blue E meant "internet".
You seem to assume that the average person isn't going to want this rather than Firefox. That's patently false. I dislike Gecko: in my experience WebKit works better and faster. I dislike Mozilla: they seem to me to be manned with incompetent workers who are each brilliant at one small thing, poor with everything else.
Above all, I dislike Firefox. I think it's extremely ugly to look at. I've had more crashes with that in Windows than I've had with Safari, and Safari on Windows isn't nearly as stable as it is on OS X. Its developers focus too much on hype and not enough on reliability and ease of use. They're arrogant about it, too.
So if Google makes a web browser similar to how they made their chat client, they'll find a market. All they need is something simple, uncluttered, fast, and efficient - and that's what they're offering up here. They don't list one feature here that I don't think is essential, and they don't miss more than one or two features that I wish they had. I think that, in terms of browser design, we've just seen Google announce that there's finally a competitor to Apple's browser. And the thing is, there are a lot of people who dislike Firefox but use it for plugins. If a browser appears that's better-designed AND open, Firefox is going to get hurt.
Also, how do you think Firefox got 20%? Google. Google Google Google. And I'm certain that they can push Chrome much faster if and when they want to.
The solution isn't advertising. The solution is figuring out just how to make a browser that users will actively seek out. Firefox was like that for a while, before other browsers got tabs. Beyond that, though, it's never had anything that new users really care much about, with the slim exception of the tech market. Most Firefox users can't tell the difference between it and IE without a hacker friend pointing it out. And I think Google is aware of that.
User goes to the site and already has Chrome. My site automatically detects that, and they can download my Gears app.
User goes to the site and has Firefox. My site detects that and gives them an option of the "lite" and the "full" version of my Gears app. The "full" version just happens to come with an install of the Chrome.
User goes to the site and has IE. My site detects that and gives them the download link to my app that comes with a Chrome installer.
In all three cases, I get what I want -- users use my app, and preferably running on a platform that runs fast enough. If I'm targeting "mom and pop", I doubt they'd notice that it happens to come with Chrome.
Because I can write a Gears app that doesn't have the URL links or the menu links, as far as the user is concerned, they are simply running my app. I can easily see Google pushing an "office suite", which simply consists of a gears version of Gmail, GDoc, etc.
Personally, I liked Firefox 1 and 1.5. I thought Firefox 2 was horrible, and all the IEs worse. When Firefox 3 release candidates came out, I switched to it immediately. Reading through those feature lists, as soon as Chrome is available for Linux, I'm getting a copy of it. Maybe I won't have to keep disabling Javascript by default with Chrome.
Pity Chrome is only Windows. I'd love to see how Google makes it look and run on Leopard.
Will Google continue to pay and support Mozilla Foundation? Because once that's gone...
I guess it comes down to what they are trying to achieve with the browser in the first place. Is it improving the web experience or creating a dominant browser?
I think it's likely that the latter will creep in once they're at it for a few years. But for now the first seems to be a pretty important goal. For now, Firefox is a pretty important way to further that goal. And for now, Google seems happy enough to sink some cash into that goal. $15m-$20m p/y is probably a reasonable sum (compare to other expenses in this area) as long as A: Firefox significantly improves the web for users & B: That is a Google goal that they're willing to pay for.
It's not charity either. What's default search worth on the open market? Probably something.
Refer: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrati...
http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2008/08/26/firefox-summit-ref...
In terms of marketing, Microsoft did very little compared to Mozilla.
What would you use this incognito feature for, except the obvious? Are they really creating a feature just for that one thing?
Even more important. With the browser being a true OS and more and more applications living in the cloud, there is a slight chance that people would have less of a need to carry their own laptop around, and just work on someone else's. Incognito mode could be a way to make that easy and worry-free.
Plus the obvious.
but beyond that, google needs to compete with apples webkit on the mobile front. they need to embed a browser in android - preferably their browser ;) so far mozilla does not have an answer to the mobile webkit.
i dont see this as a dig on mozilla, google is funding them. i see mozilla remaining the best consumer app and goggles chrome becoming standard fair for mobile and desktop app browsing/computing for enterprise.
That being said, a browser using WebKit + Gears + solic process sandbox model appeals to me a lot. Props to Google for explicitly referencing the Biba model, too -- if they can get web developers to start paying attention to the body of security theory published in the last 40 years, the browser itself could be a huge flop, and still leave us better off than we are currently.
zip of pngs: http://brevity.org/pic/chrome/google-chrome-mccloud-comic.zi...
or, all in individual png files: http://brevity.org/pic/chrome/
I swear that reading McCloud is almost enough to send me to art school.
Maybe they are tired of giving Mozilla Corp Ad Words money for Firefox searches.
If you've ever tried to write a complex web app you immediately bang your head against the low, low ceiling afforded by the browser. Google knows this as well as anybody and it impedes adoption of Google apps like Gmail or Docs. Making the browser into a better platform is good for their business -- note they are giving away their spiffy new JS engine and the whole thing is open source.
If Firefox adopted their innovations tomorrow or one-upped them, I'm sure the Chrome team would be very happy.
Plus, like Apple, they've got a mobile platform now so maybe they'll use some subset of Chrome in Android.
Is there any/much value in controlling the browser or owning the most popular browser in itself?
*By 'in itself' I mean ignoring advantages such as Google's: 'We need web-apps to work' or Microsoft's: 'We need web-apps not to work'
If default Search Engine settings are actually worth what Google paid ($55m for 15% of the market X 3 yrs) & no other revenue sources exist, the market's worth about $120m p/y. is that it?
BTW, I think that the big success of Google is in realising that's really true. Web Searches == money. But not inherently.
Because that'd be included in the above estimate ($120m p/y for %100 of the market) assuming they're paying mozilla fairly for defaults.
Do you mean something else? Like eyeballs on the browser itself?
By owning the browser, Google (who a media sales company) know more about you, and can generate a better yield for their customers (ie, advertisers).
- selling it as a corporate intranet platform -- in fact, knowing Google, this is probably already in beta internally
- similarly, convincing corporations to make it the installed browser of choice, due to improved security
- selling a low-priced GooglePC, or even giving it away. Preconfigured internet with some partner, and make Chrome the default and only shell, with prominent links to Google apps.
- putting it on cell phones via Android? But it sounds like the Android team is going with WebKit and not Chrome just yet.
What do I sign up for in terms of privacy? I didn't read through the whole deal(who does?) but saw some stuff about ads, does Google track my surfing?
I'm missing the top right Firefox searchbar where I can search wikipedia and other sites though.
*edit: fixed grammar error
Also, all current JS engines are doing conservative GC? Really?
It's a bit peculiar though, how both the recently published IE8 and now "Chrome" both have tabs isolated.
I hope Opera will be able to keep up with all the competition!
The inventors of Mouse Gestures & Speed Dial etc deserve quite a bit of respect.