The recent launch of Google's web browser Chrome could spark a new internet browser war. This time it's Google vs Microsoft. We look at who's likely to win.
Just which web browser is better?
First we had Microsoft vs Mozilla in the browser wars, when Firefox and IE went head to head. Now Google has stirred things up with the launch of Chrome and so a three-way browser war is beckoning.
Chrome is an almost completely new web browser. In fact, other than the core rendering engine, which is based on the open-source WebKit standard of Safari - everything in Google Chrome constitutes a rethinking of how you engineer a browser application. For example, with the current versions of Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer, individual web page tabs are hosted in a single process - a model that is efficient (in terms of memory and resource consumption) but also prone to catastrophic failures: a single crashed tab can easily take down the entire browser application.
Chrome seeks to eliminate this problem by isolating each tab within its own application process and then using the built-in memory protection capabilities of modern, preemptively multitasking operating systems to keep code and data in a failing tab from stomping on other processes. So now, when that buggy Flash applet on your favourite humour site goes belly up, it won't necessarily take down the entire browser - the processes running in other tabs will keep chugging along.
This is a big deal for Google, which is banking on wider adoption of its hosted application offerings and battling the perception that browsers are unreliable, especially when you start running multiple web applications in a tabbed format. Nobody wants to trust their line-of-business applications to an unstable environment, so Google hopes that Chrome will provide the kind of robustness that can assuage customers' fears.
Double stuff browsers
Of course, few technology ideas are truly original, and the case of the multi-process, tabbed browser is no exception. In fact, Google can't even claim to be the first to market with this model - Microsoft beat them to the punch by a week when it released its own take on multi-process browsing in the form of Internet Explorer 8.0 Beta 2.
Like Chrome, IE 8 uses multiple, discrete processes to isolate and protect each tab's contents. However, while Chrome takes a purist approach and literally launches a new process with each opened tab, IE 8 uses more of a hybrid model: it creates multiple instances of the iexplore.exe process but doesn't specifically assign each tab to its own instance. Thus a look at Task Manager under Windows will show an equal or greater number of Chrome instances than running tabs, whereas IE 8 will generate a fewer number of instances - for example, six copies of iexplore.exe to support 10 discrete tabs - and share them among the running tabs.
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Comments
Alex said: Chrome is much faster it never crashes it has an very effective way of blocking pop ups Its just way better than IE I also like Firefox but it does crash a little and its not nearly as fast I find Opera to be almost as slow as IE
Alaa Nayfeh said: i never had a crush befor anyway chrome is just fine and it can easly beat IE8 but it cant defeat Firfox3 or Opera 95x
bill purser said: with CHROME almost impossible to get current E mails
Stargaze said: Hotmail asks me to update my browser whenever I try and log on with google chromeI hate that some sites require the use of Internet explorer Its like there too hard headed to understand that Mozilla is just as safe meaning 128 bit encryptionSo now its like Im downloading Roms with Chrome while visiting my online school with Internet Explorer and Mozilla sometimes gets thown in the mixThe reason tabs crash is when you dont have enough system resource weighed by network traffic I rarely crash anymore
Paul Urban said: netguy you must be one of the luckiest people on earth never to have had a browser or tab crash especially with the amount of usage you have
AdMuchButtMunch said: Nash - they make their money through ads
Brayden said: I like Google Chrome because when I test it with my site Im creating it looks just the way it should anyway it starts up the quickest but Im loyal user of Firefox 3 Anyway they are making Internet Explorer for Windows 7 aka Windows Vienna that is set to release in 2010 or very late 2009
Nash said: Be nice if they could add a decent popup blocker to their browsers that gets rid of crap adverts to Banners etc like admuncher
Nocash350 said: I installed IE 8 but it doesnt display web pages properly I myself am happy with IE 7 And niether have i experinced the web browser crashing at all its perfectly fine for me as for chrome i see it as a basic web browser for those who are new to the internet and prefer the basics But I will always use Firefox for major downloads because it is faster and safer and I prefer it over google chrome
Nocash350 said: I installed IE 8 but it doesnt display web pages properly I myself am happy with IE 7 And niether have i experinced the web browser crashing at all its perfectly fine for me as for chrome i see it as a basic web browser for those who are new to the internet and prefer the basics But I will always use Firefox for major downloads because it is faster and safer and I prefer it over google chrome
Bill Smith said: All the articles on browsers hardly ever mention Opera and when thery do they mention its great advantage It serves as a email client and browser all at the same time Makes life a dodle
NetGuy said: Just when was the last time one of your tabs crashedIn my case as an internet user for at least 10 years I dont remember the last time Ive had the browser crash or give me grief Perhaps Im not adventurous enough but Ive visited a lot of sites and have been using the web for up to 18 hours a day year after year since 2001 when I got broadband and running a second phone line and two dial-up accounts before thatPerhaps its also because I tend to avoid Flash I assume thats not the only cause of browser crashes and even have some PCs with no Flash support
Nev said: Google Chrome with its launch getting blanket Internet coverage everywhere is lightning fast and looks like it will become very popular in the futureHowever what is somewhat worrying is that with its installation also comes googleupdaterexe which if left untouched constantly contacts Gooogle base and updates anything Google deems fit onto my system without giving me any option to control it Also concerns have been widely expressed that despite a recent change in their Terms of Use an unknown amount of personal browsing habits could also be garnered by Google in the same processI dont necessarily distrust Google but as it is my system I do not allow any updates to happen without my knowledge or consent I have therefore changed the settings of googleupdaterexe to give me manual control of any Google Chrome updates so that I know the reason if anything untoward happens to my system