Tech Kritik

As you may know, Google owns the Internet or at least wants to. However, they seem to have stumbled into a roadblock because a certain company (Microsoft) owns a significant amount of marketshare of a certain web browser (Internet Explorer). So if you’re Google, what do you do? You release your own browser and hope in a few years it’ll knock your competition down to its knees. Well, that’s exactly what Google did today with the release of Google Chrome. Based on the Safari web-kit, Google Chrome is very speedy and lightweight.

With Chrome, Google seems to have taken the best features from both Internet Explorer and Firefox, improved them, and packaged them neatly in their browser. For instance, most browsers have two fields, one for your URLs and the other to perform searches. With Chrome, Google broke the tradition by creating a single bar where you can search and type URLs into. Other features in Google Chrome include:

New Tab Page

Similar to Opera’s speed dial, Chrome’s new tab page displays most visited sites, a search box to search your history, your recent bookmarks, and recently closed tabs.

Application Shortcuts

On any site, you can create a web application, which makes an icon on your desktop. Simply double click the icon and a new streamlined window will open with the site.

Quick Bookmarks

If bookmarking in Firefox is your thing, then bookmarking in Google Chrome is very much the same. Just click the star near the address bar and just like that, you’ve bookmarked the site your on. You can take it a bit further and edit the name of the site, choose the folder you want the bookmark in, and you can remove it, all by clicking on the star icon.

Incognito Mode

Just like Internet Explorer, Google has put a mode in it’s browser to automatically erase your tracks when you close the open window. While it does erase your history, cookies, and other stored data, it still allows sites to collect and share information about you (IE doesn’t).

Other Features

Other features included in Google Chrome are domain name highlighting (similar to IE), dynamic tabs, pop-ups are confined to their own tabs, and the tabs are on top of the address bar.

Overall, I think Google has built a fast, simple browser that packs lots of features. There are some bugs and a few wrinkles to iron out, but for a beta release, Google Chrome is very impressive and can only get better.

Google Chrome