Google has build a web browser. I don’t know the details, but they are releasing the beta tomorrow. As Microsoft is releasing it’s own beta’s for Internet Explorer 8, I don’t think the timing is an accident.
Just from skimming the official google blog post, it looks like they aren’t trying to come in a destroy the competition. It gives credit to Apple’s Webkit as well as Firefox, and plans to release the source code for community development.
I am a big fan of Google, and I’m looking forward to see what comes of this project. Sometimes their ideas freak me out just little, but maybe I’m just old fashioned. I’ll be downloading Chrome tomorrow.
UPDATE: The download URL will be gears.google.com/chrome/?hl=en. It is not live yet, but it was, just long enough to be indexed by Google’s own search engine.
Unfortunately Google’s attempt at a browser failed miserably! They were actually able to capture nearly 10% of the market upon release (which is unheard of) but due to the lack of a true security model they have dropped down to under 1%. They have no real cookie handling settings for the user to tweak and the vulnerabilities that exist in the browser are high because users are not able to turn off scripting in any way – this in my opinion is a true show stopper. This will allow cross-site scripting and cross-site reference forgery to occur. Yes, I was one who was excited and quickly downloaded and installed the browser but have since removed it due to the lack of security in it (Yikes, IE has more security…). I for one will just stick with FireFox – tried and tested and accepted by Geeks everywhere!
JPott