Google Chrome – Do we need another browser?
Image from TechCrunch.com
That was the first question that popped into my head when I heard rumors that Google was developing a new web browser. Actually, the first *thought* that popped into my head was “Shit, not another freakin’ browser to test my applications in!”.
Well, needless to say I was a little upset that Google decided it needed to play in this arena now, and for what good reason? I mean we already have IE6/7/8 to test new web application in which is by far the most dominant browser out there (right now), and is likely the majority of most office environments as it comes standard with MS operating systems. Firefox is making some major headway, but we all have to make sure things work in IE first and foremost because if you can get your app to run properly in IE most likely it will run in Firefox with no problems 
Then there is Safari which is making a comeback, Mozilla, and of course Opera. That is a long enough checklist, and there are more, but strategically those the the main ones I cover. Now we have a new one?!? WTF mate?
So I grudgingly did some research on Google Chrome and was quite surprised at what I found. It looks like Google might actually be on to something here…and it also raised a lot of questions like why on earth isn’t IE or Firefox doing some of this stuff already? I mean especially IE, Microsoft has vast sums of money to dump into their R&D groups, and are loosing the internet market share in practically every aspect of their business model. Why haven’t they re-invented IE to be more robust like the new Chrome browser is (supposedly) going to be? So onto some of the things I learned about Chrome…
First, Google stood back and looked at the browser as practically an OS all unto itself. This might explain some of the rumors that were floating around about Google developing an OS themselves which they continually deny.
Most browsers are single threaded: You notice this when you visit some crap webpage that has a piece of javascript loading and it hangs for whatever reason. The whole browser locks up, and if you’re using a tabbed browser you cannot even switch tabs. If the webpage doesn’t come back and start responding, you have to end the process and re-open the browser again. This truly sucks if you were in the middle of something useful in a different tab and you’ve now lost all that work. Sure Firefox has a recovery option but it doesn’t recover any data that you might have been creating at the time of the crash (posts, etc). Chrome is supposedly multi-threaded and each tab would have it’s own process. This process isolation is similar to how an OS keeps track of things running and how you can deal with a rouge process without having to re-boot your computer. Very interesting take, and again, one wonders why this isn’t being done already?
Next is memory allocation: Chrome supposedly manages memory much more efficiently due to the multi-threaded processes per tab. If you don’t re-boot your computer much, like me, you just send it into hibernation, then you notice after a few days of having your browser running it chews up a ton of memory, especially Firefox (yes 3.0 does this too!). I have had Firefox chew up over 1GB of memory, even after I close every single tab except one and have it on the google homepage. Chrome allocates memory per process and ties them to tabs, so in theory (I have not tested Chrome, obviously) when you close a tab that process gets torn down and the memory allocated is released so this type of problem goes away.
Troubleshooting, and debugging: It appears that Chrome added in some troubleshooting tools similar to the Windows Task Manager, that allows you to view the various processes running per tab, and see which ones might not be behaving. If you have a rouge process killing your machine you can simply end it, and that tab closes, freeing up the memory allocated and also leaving all your other tabs intact. That is super cool I must say since I have been victim to the browser lockup and the feeling of despair when you realize you are screwed for the other tabs you had open…they are going away.
Testing and beta: Well it seems Google has a pretty extensive database of websites to test their browser with…I guess that is a perk of being the #1 search engine in the world! If they really get this right there might actually be room in this world for another browser that brings something useful to the table, in fact, this might have just raised the bar for the other dominant browsers currently out there!
From disdain to optimism, I am now actually looking forward to getting my hands on Chrome and testing it out. Now if it actually renders HTML/CSS/etc correctly, then we might have a winner. Oh yeah, it is completely open source as well, so you can look forward to the add-ons that Firefox enjoys from the development community!