Joshua SciarrinoLast name; “Sure-Reno”

Google Chrome is a little muddyFiled Under: Google

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Everyone is salivating over Google’s new internet browser, Google Chrome (somebody likes cars). Inside of of Google Chrome is a V8 (stop thinking cars!), which was custom made by the Google team. The purpose of V8 is the engine of browser, in other words, it makes pages run faster.

The concept of Google Chrome was forged from components from Apple’s WebKit (which is used to create Safari) and Mozilla’s Firefox (another browser). Google created a neat video called, “The story behind Google Chrome“. If you don’t like videos and you like comics, check out their Comic Book. (39 pages in total; I don’t doubt someone wants to buy those domains on page 10)

When you launch Google Chrome, it’s interface is similar to Opera, where it has 3 by 3 (total of 9) boxes, used as a ‘dial’ for popular sites. As you start using Chrome, it sends data to Google. If you do a query, Google.com records it but so does Chrome. This bite size information (cookies) are sent to Google for them to ‘improve’ your internet experience (just like when you use Google, Google.com’s results get better for YOU, individually; things like ’spellcheck’ and ‘did you mean’ evidence of that). But as time goes by, Google Chrome will take the most popular 9 sites you visit and fill in the default homepage.

Another feature Google Chrome has is called the “Omnibox”. It’s similar to Google Suggest, the new default feature when you search on Google.com, where as you type letters in, a drop-down list appears to help your search experience. Omnibox will suggest various things, such as: specific websites/webpages you previously visited, files on your hard drive, Google search, and other diverse suggestions.

Within 9 hours, on Digg, the page was dugg over 7,200 times. Which is outstanding! Plus by the comments, it seems the Digg community is in love with Google. (Update: Currently now over 9,100 diggs)

After the launch, within 8 hours Matt Cutt’s tweeted that Chrome has 2% of the market share. This is astounding but just only the beginning of Google conquest over the internet world, scratch all that. Google is trying to build a platform for the next wave of the web, Web 3.0. I think Mircosoft, Mozilla Foundation, and Apple will take the concept of ‘tabs with different processors’ and add it to their browsers. But I’m not sure if they can catch up, some tests have come in stating that Google’s Chrome browser is at least 5 times faster than all of it’s competitors. Others have done their own tests stating it’s on the same plain as Firefox and Internet Explorer

Okay, now to a light critique, if you read the FAQ on Google Chrome, you’ll realize this is called ‘beta’. Some areas where Google Chrome can improve:

• Google Chrome isn’t displaying characters correctly (if a developer/coder doesn’t label code properly, the page will be displayed sloppy, where FF, IE, and Safari have compensated for this)
• Declaring encoding using JavaScript (document.write) doesn’t work (If a developer/coder uses Javascript heavily to create a website, such as writing in js, it will break, yet again FF, IE, and Safari have compensated for this)
• The HTML5 database API isn’t supported in Google Chrome (the latest version of HTML isn’t supported for developers…)
• There is no RSS reader.

I commented on Matt Cutt’s blog exposing the truth behind his first point. Matt said that Chrome doesn’t send any data to Google.com but I said that’s semantics, and Google Chrome does record information and send it to Google, Inc. I wasn’t being hostile nor a jerk about things. I just opposed his first point in his blog. In addition, Matt decided add another blog post. He now points out, in his 3rd Q & A, it as a ‘conspiracy theory against Google’, when instead it’s a fear of too much power.

Google literally has 80 to 90% of the market share of search, worldwide. Some stats report that Google has 68% of a market share in the US. In addition to the US, there are other countries, Google literally has 90% of the market share in 95% of those countries (not in Russia, China, nor Japan). 

US laws are far too behind, with a steady recession happening, and the entire country divided, it doesn’t look like the US will catch up anytime soon. I bring this up because Google is based in the USA and Google does have monopoly characteristics. A South African firm was one of the first to sue Google over their dominance of market share.

Summary: Did Google make a superb browser? Maybe, time will tell after the expert reports come in. Are there legal issues with it? Yes and no. No because the US is too far behind technology. Yes because Google’s shear dominance is very similar to Microsoft’s dominance as an OS.

If you want to test it out, make sure you have Windows (Sorry, no Mac, or Linux platforms yet).