NJR-Team

Google; the search engine giant of the World Wide Web has never stopped growing and always provides new products and services on the web. Among one of those products is Google Chrome, a newcomer in the world of browsers. Chrome is an open source browser with a minimal design and with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier to use.

Browser ranks

According to w3school.com Browser Statistic, the word of the browser is dominated with 2 big players, Firefox being used by 46.6% of the web surfer and Internet Explorer with 39.6%, then come in third place Google Chrome with 7.1%. However, even if it is still far from the head, Google Chrome has gotten more popular every month over the last 11 month. Being powered by Google has helped the 13 month old browser to quickly become more popular then Safari, Mozilla and Opera.

Faster JavaScript = More interactive web

Google Chrome is different from other browsers; it is optimized to execute JavaScript fast, this will make it a very good alternativebrowser for the future. To give you an overview of the difference of performance the browser gives, here is a JavaScript NES emulator ; on Firefox, Tetris works at around  6 FPS and uses 50% of my CPU and it’s too slow to play, while on Internet Explorer it is simply not loading at all. On the other hand, Chrome aces it with 60FPS and uses around 40% of my CPU. So not only is Chrome running JavaScript 10 times faster, it makes JS  also lighter on the processor .

SunSpider benchmark results show Google’s Chrome is the fastest of the top five Windows browsers at rendering JavaScript. (Lower scores/shorter graph bars are better.) www.computerworld.com/

If you need more benchmark go take a look here

Speed is essential to the future of internet especially when everybody is talking about a more social web with more interactive content. Interactive content means more JavaScript (Ajax) and we previously saw that there was a limit of what the current browser could do without lag and without hammering the processor.

Chrome is fast but is it secure?

Speed is important but so is security, Google Chrome sandbox makes surfing more secure, even thought flaws are found, there is no real threat to the files on the computer because the sand-box isolates the browser from the system . Chrome proved itself more secure than the other browsers by being the only one standing in the Pwn2Own hacker contest.

You don’t care about what security expert says? Here’s a page where you can make crash all the browsers, the only difference is how they react, Chrome is the only one to not completely crash.

Chrome’s bad points

Google Chrome doesn’t have the most user friendly interface and functionality or the customizability of Firefox, neither does it has the tons of excellent plug-ins Firefox has. Many critique complained about the fact that it was only compatible with Windows. But Chrome doesn’t even have 2 years, I’m sure that they will find way to make everything simpler and when it’s going to become more popular, plug-ins will be developed for Chrome. Also I was taking a look at Google Chrome 4 Beta and it looks like there will be a Mac and a Linux version as well.

Why will Chrome be a strong challenger in the browser wars

Having gained 3.2% of popularity over the last 8 month, Chrome has everything it needs to continue to grow. Google optimise each of their own products and services for it, and they have a LOT of products, like Google Search, Gmail, Google Map, Blogger, Google Group, etc.

Since Google’s products are used by millions of people every day Google can easily attract users to their browser.Also with the near release of Google Wave, optimised for Google Chrome, some users might find their browsers slow and heavy on Wave and then change to the only browser on witch it runs perfectly : Chrome.

Google Wave will become very popular  because of its reactivity and real-time execution(lots of AJAX), Wave will make the web evolve of the Web 2.0 to Web 2.5 : where the web looks more like a normal application and this is in what Chrome most excel with.

This year, Google announced they were adding another string to their bow, after Android, they are working on Google Chrome OS. This OS based on Linux kernel, will be focusing on the web surfing and will most likely come for free with Google Chrome installed on it. the good image of Google and its strong partner( Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and others) will make people consider it a good option .

Conclusion

The performance of a browser like Google Chrome is essential for the future use of the internet, that’s why Chrome is going to be a strong competitor in the browser war. Its a very secure browser, light, open fast and has great themes.

The more and more people will use Chrome and without knowing it, Chrome will join the fight between Firefox and Internet explorer and put some action in the browser world.