Google has finally decided that it's time to roll out it's own browser. Chrome as Google has christened it is Google's attempt to improve on issues that fail in todays browsers. Per their blog posting Chrome is designed to be a tool much like their homepage, clean, fast & efficient. I like this part of Google's philosophy cause in the end a browser is simply a mechanism to access rich content.

As much as the creators of Internet Explorer fussed over giving end users tabbed browsing last year(or was it the year before - do I even care), Google is attempting to take tabbed browsing to a more secure level, run each tab inside it's very own sandbox. Why didn't the open-source community think of this before ? There are also attempts at improving speed & responsiveness along with a more powerful JavaScript engine - V8.

You may wonder why Google has decided to roll out it's own browser. Now I can't claim to know the answer but we can speculate that given the way Google is pushing for web based applications & trying to motivate the internet junta to start believing in Web 2.0, rolling out their own browser can help them push the boundaries of what can be done versus what is available. This will in turn help them design richer web apps, think Picassa & Google Maps are the best AJAX applications, I'm sure Google has plans to make them better. And guess what, if Google can make a standards compliant browser & make it run like it's on steroids(I'm sure they'll) watch out Mr. 80% of browser share Microsoft, we'll not be accepting repeated security fixes for IE, we won't want it altogether.

Google may have the best opportunity to take over the browser share from most browsers. Why ? Simple, Google is a household name. So far Google has delivered where other companies couldn't for years. For most people, Google search is a synonym for searching on the internet.Google Maps was using AJAX long before Web 2.0 became the buzz word. Although Google is the biggest name on the internet today, it is not sacrificing the user experience, it's not even charging the user. For most people Google can possibly come out as an altruist company that helps them achieve their purpose on the internet & why won't people line up to take what Google has to offer - Satisfying user experience on the menu today!

Hopefully, sometime today Chrome will be available as a beta for Windows machines & will be available in over 100 countries. Oh, btw Chrome will be available as open source software.

*The views/thoughts presented above are my own. All info about Chrome was obtained from Google's blog posting - http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html. I'm not affiliated with Google or Microsoft.