Google’s Chrome Web Browser Beta Launch

This is not totally related to web hosting but I thought I’d let you know that Google has just launched their own web browser named Chrome as a beta release.

The browser was made available for download overnight on September 2nd 2008. Actually it is only available for Microsoft Windows but Google plans to make it available for some other operating systems eventually.

Installing Google Chrome is pretty simple and achieved by launching an .exe file. The installer will then ask you to close your current web browser window so that it can import some settings and bookmarks.

At first sight, the interface looks nice but it feels kind of weird not to have the standard menu bar. Just as Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome makes use of tabs so you can browse multiple websites from a single window. The difference is that Google Chrome’s tabs are running different browser processes unlike its competitors. I am not sure if that will increase browsing speed or not…

Google claims that its new JavaScript Virtual Engine would load Java content faster than any other browser. Many users also say that it loads web pages faster but I didn’t notice much difference.

Google Chrome also features an Incognito mode that will allow you to surf the web anonymously. In this mode, all the cookies, cache and browsing history is wiped out when you close the browser.

With Mozilla’s release of Firefox 3 a few weeks ago and Microsoft’s release of Internet Explorer 8 Beta last week, we have yet to see if Google’s latest weapon will make a dent in the web browsing software industry. A thing is sure though, no other browser has the backing of such a huge company except Microsoft.

Click here to download Google Chrome

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