As mentioned in yesterday’s EOD, Google has made Chrome (beta) available for download today. The open source web browser, designed to be fast and especially good with web applications, is set to take on Internet Explorer and Firefox. It has launched as beta for Windows, with versions for Apple Mac and Linux to come.
Many people see this as likely to reignite the browser wars. With Google’s unmatched online presence it’s very likely, even considering the fact that Internet Explorer has such a huge installed base (even Firefox has just 20% of the browser market), that this will prove to be a very successful and smart move for them.
We’re all very keen to try it out here at Plusnet Towers – particularly in the web team. We’ll let you know how we get on with it.
Peter
This entry was posted by Peter Jackson on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 9:10 am and is tagged with and is posted in the category Tech News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Depending on which source you use, Firefox has closer to 30%, but general consensus is that IE has about 52% of the browser market these days.
I personally am not all that excited by Google's Chrome. Yep, it loads web pages, and reasonably fast too. But I have customised Firefox in ways that just aren't (yet) possible with Chrome. So while I've enjoyed having a play with Google's new app, I'll stick with Firefox until one of the other browsers creates a more compelling reason why I should move. I'm not being a luddite, I just don't need to move to something that offers me less. Chrome has potential but Firefox is still the Swiss army knife of browsers for me.
In my briefest of tests, Chrome seemed quite sluggish. I do, however, like where they're trying to go with Chrome (esp. website crashes, only that tab goes down, not the whole browser) - will be interesting to see it in practice. It will take some time to get it as personalised as Firefox though.
Pete - any reason that there's loads of blank space under your name in the original article?!
@SDC Line breaks.. I've removed them.
Line breaks... NSS !! 
just had a play with chrome. I have had slow loading of web pages on internet explorer since I had interleaving turned off. Yet with chrome I get fast loading of pages.
If its just the pre fetching of dns then not much of an advantage on firefox or microsoft.
[...] mentioned this morning that Google had entered into the browser market with Chrome, designed to be a lightweight and [...]
Here at Plusnet we're always trying to use clever open source things to make our lives easier. Sometimes we write our own and make other people's lives easier too!
We sell broadband, phone, VoIP and more to homes and businesses in the UK. Winner of 9 out of 11 Categories in the 2008 USwitch survey. Winner of "Best Consumer ISP" at 2008 ISPA awards. Voted number 1 in the Broadband Choices 2008 survey.
© Plusnet plc All Rights Reserved. E&OE
Community Site News is powered by WordPress
