Google Launches Web Browser in 2008: Google Chrome

Posted by Upright Team

One step closer to taking over the world… Google announced their new web browser called Google Chrome on September 1st. They even launched a cool little comic book to help explain this new browser. In an effort to provide a browser that runs faster and more efficiently than existing browsers, Google has made a leap into offering yet another product to improve the user experience.The geeks here at Upright Communications have taken Chrome for a test drive and are happy to share our experience. If you’d like to try it out yourself, just go to Google. They’ve placed a link right on their home page to get you to the download for Chrome. (Nice marketing technique Google).

What we like about Chrome:

It’s fast. Web pages and web applications run much faster in Chrome.
Tabs. IE and Firefox both have tabs, but Chrome allows you to drag a tab out into a new browser window which is a pretty cool feature.
If a page crashes, it doesn’t shut down the whole browser like some other browsers do. Just the tab that crashed shuts down.
User friendly. Without reading a single help file, I was able to easily find a few settings that helped me customize the browser to fit my personal preferences.
“One Box” – you can use the location bar at the top as your search box, address bar, etc. For example, you can just type “maps” and a drop down menu appears where Google Maps is one of the top choices.
Cool “inspect element” feature where you can right click an element on the page and view the source code and styles associated with that element. This is useful for designers and developers who are trying to tweak their design so it looks just right on every browser.
It’s non distracting, so your focus is more on the content now and not the browser. No wonky toolbars and extra buttons that you don’t need. You just get the basics – tabs, navigation, “one box”, and an options menu.
You can drag your bookmarks to your favorite web applications to your desktop. So, now you can access your Gmail account, Google Calendar, Favorite social media site app, etc. with a click of an icon on your desktop.

What (little) we don’t like about Chrome:

You can’t use the same plugins that you use in Firefox. This was a bummer because geeks like me love all those little plugins. Those same plugins also slow down the browser and cause it to crash, so sometimes a little Chrome is nice. I wonder if it’s just a matter of time before Google has a whole set of their own plugins?
No Google PageRank indicator. Hmmm… Google, are you trying to tell us something? We feel that this is an evolution away from the focus on PR and towards more important ranking factors.
This browser could certainly give other browsers a run for their money. After all Google Analytics has already added Chrome as a tracked browser type. But, it just gives developers and designers one more browser to try and make their design compatible with. This could prove to be frustrating as it’s already a challenge to get a web page to look good in Firefox and IE.

So what does this mean for the average Internet user? If you’re not a developer or a coder or of a geeky nature, Chrome is still pretty cool. Just give it a try. And if you are one of the many users of Google services such as Gmail or Google Calendar, features like the shortcut to your Gmail are pretty cool. You might also benefit from the speed of Google Chrome. If your normal browser seems slow, give Chrome a try… it might just be your browser slowing you down.

One question that comes to mind when Google rolls out something cool like this is: Is Google trying to tell us something? Does this new app-friendly browser give us a peek into the future of the web? Google certainly knows something, and Chrome is getting ready for a new Internet, perhaps.

We encourage you to take Chrome for a spin yourself and see how you like it. It will be interesting to see where Google goes with this one.