Originally posted 2008-09-02 16:18:27.
After years of Google working on it’s own browser, Google has released it today. 
Let’s welcome Google Chrome.
If you subscribe to a few tech blogs, I am sure you are going to be inundated, even feel sick with news about Google Chrome. So, I am going to keep this brief and just show a few things I like about Google Chrome.
Google Chrome Features
- New tab page – instead of a blank page or a default page, shows your most visited pages, most used search engines and recently bookmarked sites.
- Omnibox is the only box you have in Chrome – web search, history, address bar, etc. You get suggestions as you type.
- Application shortcuts – Open webapps such as Gmail, Google reader, etc directly from Desktop with shortcuts. Think Mozilla Prism from Google. (Mozilla Prism Review +best Prism Webapps)
- Crash Control – my favorite feature in Chrome. Every tab runs as a separate process which means a crashed tab doesn’t close all your other open tabs as well.
- No download manager – no annoying popup download manager.
Some of other cool features in Google Chrome include Dynamic tabs, Incognito mode, Safe browsing, etc.

Under the hood
Google has worked a lot to get cutting edge technology into this browser. Google Chrome is based on Apple’s WebKit – used in it’s mobile platform Android and Mozilla Firefox. It also sports a completely re-written javascript engine called V8 that makes web apps that are Javascript heavy like Gmail run much much faster.
If you would like learn more about what’s under the hood of Google Chrome as well as see why Google decided to create their own browser, this Google Chrome Comic is for you.
Update: Digital Inspiration has a nice post on the new features in Google Chrome that are missing in other browsers.
Download Google Chrome (beta for Windows)
After installing, I had to close Firefox so Chrome can import my settings from Firefox and did so without a hickup. Chrome is super super fast and I already have application shortcuts made for my frequently accessed webapps such as Gmail, Google Reader, Passpack, etc.
A Linux and Mac version is not available at the moment but we can only hope to see it soon. I can hear lot of people saying Google is one step closer to taking over the world. I see this as one step closer to making the ‘perfect browser’.
[via Official Google Blog]
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