Google on Tuesday released the beta version of its new open-source Chrome Web browser. The 7-Mbyte download is available now via http://www.google.com/chrome/ in 122 countries and 43 languages. It will run on Windows-based computers running XP or Vista, but Mac and Linux versions are still in the works. News over Chrome broke Monday after Google inadvertently published a Web comic book with details about the browser. "What we wanted to build was not so much a traditional content viewer but more of a window manager for web pages and applications," Ben Goodger, a Google software engineer, said during a Tuesday press conference. Will Chrome encroach on Internet Explorer territory? Google officials took pains to not even mention Microsoft's name during Tuesday's press event, though Google co-founder Sergey Brin did acknowledge when questioned that if "IE9 was much, much better as a consequence of Chrome, we would consider that a success."
Tried it. Can't say it's anything impressive. Seems a bit faster than firefox though, but oh, those missing extensions and add-ons. I started seeing ads again on sites I visit. Gaaaaah!
It's a joke. They could have contributed to Webkit, but instead decided to take the arrogant road. It's also slow and not compliant, if you're used to WebKit.
Just downloaded it, I like the UI a lot better, and I love how they say Incognito mode is for "surprise birthday presents" right.......Google is smart.
This has been part of Safari and Firefox (through extensions Distrust or Stealther) for a while. IE8 has it now too.
Something is broken with the forward and back buttons on the mouse it doesn't actually take you to your last page.
Well it is still in beta, so bugs shouldn't be much of a surprise. Also, the popup blocker in Chrome may still make the website think you viewed the popup, meaning the popup advertisers may start paying for popups that don't get seen by anyone. On the one hand this means that the popups still use my bandwidth. On the other hand, it may lead to less popup adds being seen by people without popup blockers, because the advertisers don't want to pay for adds that don't get seen.