Yesterday, Google launched a massive salvo in the ongoing Browser Wars, when it released a public beta version of its much anticipated browser, Chrome.

For those in the tech-world, it was simply a matter of time before the internet search and advertising giant threw down the gauntlet (again) in Microsoft’s face.

Riddled with bloatware, bugs and security flaws, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has been slowly, but steadily losing the fight for dominance in the web browser battles.

Statistics vary ( see here, here and here ), but the general consensus is, Internet Explorer is on its way out. The smaller but more powerful and more relatively secure Mozilla Firefox has long been a contender for first place, and has been steadily gaining ground.

Until Google unveiled Chrome. From all the buzz surrounding it, it may fast become the browser of choice, first among technophiles, then later, the masses.

An online comic, apparently leaked from the Google team, explains the technology behind Chrome in a fairly enlightening way. So much so that I learnt a whole lot about browser structure and processes from it. Be warned, fairly geek language.

Fueled by the comic, and the buzz, I downloaded Chrome for a first look.

The Million Dollar Question: Would it become my browser of choice?

The Simple Answer: Yes. From what I’ve seen so far, a resounding yes. But not just yet.

Here’s my take.

Simplicity

It’s beautifully simple. Following Google’s trend for minimalist interfaces, Chrome is no exception. Its spartan look captivated me at first glance. The blue and white are easy on the eyes, and the home page is a history/summary of your most visited sites. Pretty nifty, unless, of course you surf porn at work.

Response
It loads pretty quick, the interface is not sluggish, responses are fluid and very subtle. Things like dragging items and tabs feel… natural. Although we’ll have to wait till it gets saddled with themes, extensions and whatnot.

Functionality
The Chrome team have thought out a whole lot of things, which makes using it pleasant. One of the most outstanding is each tab having its own discreet process so it doesn’t affect the entire browser. Here are a few other cool things in Chrome:

1. Dragging a tab away from the tab row creates a new window with the dragged tab, without so much as a blink. I’ve always wanted to to that in Firefox.
2. You can search within the address bar.
3. Loading a PDF doesn’t freeze the whole browser. Firefox annoys me everytime I accidentally click a PDF instead of downloading. I’d have to kill the whole application and restart!
4. If a tab freezes, you can kill the tab’s process and it won’t take the browser with it. Righteous!
5. When a password box pops up, it doesn’t affect the entire browser like Firefox does. Annoys me when I resume a session with over 40 tabs and each one asks for its own login, meaning you cannot browse until you either fill in all the password prompts, or kill the browser and start a new session. With Chrome, each box stays in it’s tab until you switch to that tab.
6. It has built in page element inspector. Very handy for web developers. Works almost like the Firebug extension for Firefox, but with much less functionality. It is still a very nice out-of-the-box addition.
7. It has a very nifty task manager that shows you process and memory usage for each tab and plugin (Flash, Java, etc). Funny I didn’t see the annoying “you don’t have flash player installed”. It just played the flash movie… Nice!

However, when all the praises have been sung, Chrome does have its fair share of flaws:

1. Within a few hours of its availability, a security flaw was discovered and a carpet-bombing vulnerability was also discovered .
2. While browsing the Adobe Kuler website ( a Flash based Rich Internet Application for designers) the browser froze for close to 15 seconds and kept freezing everytime I’d try to switch tabs. I had to end the Kuler tab process. Non of that in Firefox
3. The EULA (end user license agreement, which no one bothers to read these days), has a few interesting sections, like this:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

Figure that out for yourself.

There are definitely many cool features that are sure to appeal to techies, and of course, many issues sure to turn away many people, especially the average user. I’ll write about more about using Chrome daily in a later post.

There are two questions for me that still linger;

1. How will Chrome be received by the average user who represents the three quarters of the internet still using Internet Explorer. I’m sure users of Firefox and other browsers will be willing to take Chrome for a spin, but will Chrome have an impact on the masses?
2. Google has a relationship with Mozilla Firefox, which it just recently extended until 2011. The most obvious sign is the default search engine of choice in Firefox being Google. How does this work out, considering Chrome is already whipping Firefox’s behind at rendering JavaScript and loading pages, a fact which Firefox is contesting heavily?

I’m waiting to see how this plays out over the next few months.

In other news, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8, Beta.

You can tell I’m not a fan of IE.