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As a disclaimer, I should state that I am a Mac user, and have not been able to test-drive Chrome, Google’s new browser. That’s why I call this post a (p)review.. As of this post, there is no Mac version, which is lame for us Macsters (Mac + Hipster = Macster), but understanding how Google unveils it’s products, it is a predictable move. One reason Google has had such great success with it’s innovation process, is it’s willingness to release Betas and sometimes Alphas to the general public, in order to collect valuable user data and feedback. Chrome was released in 100 countries, and 43 languages, an impressive stat to make up for no Mac love.

That said, I am (almost) jealous for the first time in years of the PC world.. This quote from www.macobserver.com sums it up.

In an interview with BoomTown’s Kara Swisher, Mr. Brin (Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google) asked if she would try out Google Chrome, to which she said “no,” because there isn’t a Mac version available. Mr. Brin replied “”I know, I know, it’s embarrassing.”

All this didn’t stop me from watching the hour long press release, and subsequently reading up on some tips and tricks that have been documented already for Chrome. Overall, it looks like it will be a pretty amazing browser, if it can walk it’s talk..

It was reported today that Google Chrome took a 1% market share in it’s first 4 days. This may not sound like much, but is an incredible stat. Consider that Safari owns about 1.5% market share tops, and that Chrome is still Beta.

One of the biggest differences between Google and other browsers, is the utilization of browser data collection. Chrome is attempting to be an intuitive browser, remembering your favorite sites, searches you’ve performed, whether through Google or via internal website searches (ie Amazon) .. I will get in to the application of this concept below. This functionality is to be expected, Google has long been known for (questionably) collecting every bit of data it can from users, in order to study and monetize web users. It is a bit of a double edged sword, while it will offer some very useful tools, it will make some users uneasy about how much of their browsing habits are being tracked. I would suggest that the threat of intrusive data collection already exists, but has never been so obvious. Anyone who has read the Privacy Policy for any of Google’s apps is well aware that Google’s friendly face hides an ultra-intelligent marketing machine that does everything it can to track how you use the web in order to monetize your browsing experience

I am gonna discuss Chrome from two perspectives, tech and user, because some folks will not have any interest in the techy stuff I am sure..

1. Techy

1.1 - The first thing that I was happy to hear, especially as a Web Developer, was that Chrome was built on Web Kit (open source rendering engine used by Safari) and was not going to introduce another rendering engine to the web world.. Thank YOU Goolge, it is annoying as it is dealing with IE 6/7, hopefully Microsoft will take a page from Google’s book, and start conforming with IE 8.

1.2 - Sandbox Application - if you don’t know this term, it means that the application has no rights to access or write to your system. This means hackers will have a much harder time exploiting vulnerabilities in the browser, or websites you browse.

1.3 - V8 - the new (open source) JavaScript engine developed by Google. Google is attempting to raise the bar for Javascript processing in order to facilitate the new generation of Web Apps and java heavy websites.. As they state, they make their money with Web marketing and apps, so it is in their best interest to advance the web world. This is really cool to hear, we love our jQuery, and other JavaScript tools, would like to see the other browsers jump on board with this one too.
http://code.google.com/apis/v8/intro.html

1.4 - Open Source! - Google has released Chrome as a completely open source app.. pretty cool.

2. User

2.1 - Multiprocess - This is kinda technical, but really impacts all users a lot. Firefox is great, but definitely crashes quite a bit. This can’t be entirely blamed on Firefox, as it is often delivering websites that cause the crashes. Either way, with Chrome, Google has separated each tab, which means if one tab content crashes, or slows down to a crawl, it should not effect other tabs. If this works well, it will be one of the strongest functions that separate it from other browsers.

2.2 - Omnibox - This is Chrome’s new glorified address bar, that now combines Google Search, as well as advanced suggestions, and the coolest part, actual website searching right from the address bar (I’ll explain). The embedded Google Search is nothing new, most don’t know about it, but Firefox already has this built in (see my post on this). The suggestions are pretty cool, and some users will find them useful, especially if they learn your personal search history. Suggestions will be an obvious avenue for advertising, it may already be offering “sponsored suggestions” (on mac, can’t see for myself, *single tear*).

The coolest trick Omnibox offers is remembering sites that you have searched in the past, and offering a direct search from the address bar. This means if you search eBay often, you can begin to type the product name into the Omnibox, and it will offer a suggestion to go directly to a results page on eBay for that term. Pretty cool. Chrome also offers a quick key for this tool. In the press conference they use the example of an Amazon search; the suggestions drop down allows the user to press the Tab key to immediately direct the browser to Amazon with the search term entered and executed.

2.3 - New Tab Page - I mentioned in the introduction of this post about Google’s uncanny ability to track and utilize user’s browser history and habits, well this feature fully utilizes this data. Basically instead of offering a blank page, it will offer a page with (thumbnail) links to your most visited sites, recent searches, bookmarks and more. Now while this is a potentially useful feature in a perfect pure world where we all diligently do our work at work, never look at questionable content, or do anything we would rather keep private, many will see this as a dangerous, intrusive new feature. Gizmodo has already called it out (read here) in a hilarious post as a “Fatal Flaw”. I am assuming you can turn this feature on/off? Any PC users out there?

2.4 - Incognito Mode - In answer to 2.3, Chrome offers Incognito Mode. When browsing incog, no history, cookie, search, etc history is stored. Along with this feature, there is actually a way to create different accounts, so you could have your default (work / public) account and a private account, each would track only respective history. More info on this linked below.

2.5 - no dialogues or interuptions - Not sure how this will work having never tried it, but from what I understand, Google has done away with pop-ups for saving passwords, directing downloads etc. The idea at least with downloads is that when clicked, they will go in to a holding area essentially, showing up as a link at the bottom of the screen. You can then choose to click and drag the file into a folder or onto your desktop, or open the file directly from Chrome.

2.6 - Application Window - This feature is for Apps like gMail, Google Calendar, or other web based apps. It is essentially a broswer window that looks like a Program window, doing away with the navigation buttons, Go bar etc. This is pretty cool, and will become more and more relevant as applications that were traditionally desktop based, become offered online.

Overall, Google Chrome looks pretty amazing. And while they tote it as a simplified browser, it does have quite a bit of deep functionality. Lifehacker posted their Power User’s Guide to Chrome, a great intro to digging in to Chrome and customizing your experience.

I will post a follow-up with my real-life reaction to Chrome once it is available for Mac. Can’t wait, hopefully it happens before Christmas!