Update:<\/b><\/p>\n
The Google blog now has the news<\/a> about Chrome, which will be launched tomorrow. Kara Swisher says Google has ignited a new browser war<\/a> with Microsoft, and Om Malik thinks that the mobile world will be one of Google’s main attack points<\/a>. Harry McCracken, meanwhile, has a great list of 10 questions that the Google browser raises<\/a>.<\/p>\n Update 2:<\/b><\/p>\n Om has a post with a response<\/a> from Mozilla CEO John Lilly to the potential competitive threat from Google, which has been working closely with Mozilla. And Mike Arrington has some screenshots<\/a> of Chrome that he got from the website (which was briefly up but is now down).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Original post:<\/b><\/p>\n The reliably excellent Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped has what appears to be pretty solid confirmation<\/a> of a Google browser — known currently as Chrome — that is apparently in development at the Web behemoth. Phil got an email that included a comic from Scott McCloud<\/a>, which describes the new browser in some detail: it includes several features that borrow from Opera (tabs above the address bar, a “home page” that features most-browsed pages and links, etc.), as well as what appears to be a new approach to the browser engine.<\/p>\n According to Ionut Alex. Chitu at the Google Operating System blog, the new browser will isolate each website<\/a> in its own “sandbox,” so that if something goes wrong with one page it doesn’t crash the whole browser. Among other things, the browser will also have a “privacy mode” (known in some circles as “porn mode”) in which data about the browsing session won’t be recorded on the host PC — something Internet Exploder 8 is also supposed to include — and will include a built-in phishing and malware filter, as well as an enhanced Javascript engine<\/a>.<\/p>\n Apart from all of these details, however, the thing that really interests me is the larger point made by Ionut, which is that Google clearly sees the browser as a form of operating system — just as I think the Mozilla group does, as I wrote recently<\/a> after word of the new Ubiquity alpha announced by Aza Raskin, which is a kind of plugin that tries to tie a number of different Web apps together. Much like Mozilla’s “Prism” feature, the Google browser will also allow Web applications to run in a separate window that mimics a desktop application, and will include support for Google’s “Gears” service, which allows offline caching.<\/p>\n Although there will likely be some concerns raised about Google — the prism through which many people see the Internet — developing its own browser (will it build features that render its pages and search results better than others?), I think competition is overall a good thing. I can hardly wait to see some of the other features that Mozilla and Google and Microsoft come out with as the browser becomes a kind of OS<\/a> for the webtop or “cloud” desktop.<\/p>\n