Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on 2 September 2008, and the public stable release was on 11 December 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or "chrome", of web browsers. As of January 2011, Chrome was the third most widely used browser, and passed the 10% worldwide usage share of web browsers, according to Net Applications.[1]
In September 2008, Google released a large portion of Chrome's source code, including its V8 JavaScript engine, as an open source project entitled Chromium.[2][3] This move enabled third-party developers to study the underlying source code and to help convert the browser to the Mac OS X and Linux operating systems. Google also expressed hope that other browsers would adopt V8 to improve web application performance.[4] The Google-authored portion of Chromium is released under the permissive BSD license,[5]which allows portions to be incorporated into both open source and closed source software programs.[6]Other portions of the source code are subject to a variety of open source licenses.[7] Chromium implements the same feature set as Chrome, but lacks built-in automatic updates and Google branding, and most noticeably has a blue-colored logo in place of the multicolored Google logo
History
For six years, Google's Chief Executive Eric Schmidt was against the idea of building an independent web browser. He stated that "At the time, Google was a small company", and he did not want to go through "bruising browser wars". However, after co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page hired several Mozilla Firefoxdevelopers and built a demonstration of Chrome, Mr. Schmidt admitted that "It was so good that it essentially forced me to change my mind".[9]
[edit]Announcement
The release announcement was originally scheduled for 3 September 2008, and a comic by Scott McCloud was to be sent to journalists and bloggers explaining the features of and motivations for the new browser.[10] Copies intended for Europe were shipped early and German blogger Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped[11] made a scanned copy of the 38-page comic available on his website after receiving it on 1 September 2008.[12] Google subsequently made the comic available on Google Books[13] and mentioned it on their official blog along with an explanation for the early release
Public release
The browser was first publicly released for Microsoft Windows (XP and later versions only) on 2 September 2008 in 43 languages, officially a beta version.[15] Chrome quickly gained about 1% market share despite being only available for Microsoft Windows.[14][16][17][18] After the initial surge, usage share dropped until it hit a low of 0.69% in October 2008. It then started rising again and by December 2008, Chrome again passed the 1% threshold.[19]
In early January 2009, CNET reported that Google planned to release versions of Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux in the first half of the year.[20] The first official Chrome Mac OS X and Linux developer previews[21] were announced on 4 June 2009 with a blog post[22] saying they were missing many features and were intended for early feedback rather than general use.
In December 2009, Google released beta versions of Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux.[23][24] Google Chrome 5.0, announced on 25 May 2010, was the first stable release to support all three platforms.[25]
Chrome was one of the twelve browsers offered to European Economic Area users of Microsoft Windows in 2010
Chrome was assembled from 25 different code libraries from Google and third parties such as Mozilla's Netscape Portable Runtime, Network Security Services, NPAPI, as well as SQLite and a number of other open-source projects.[27] The JavaScript virtual machine was considered a sufficiently important project to be split off (as was Adobe/Mozilla's Tamarin) and handled by a separate team in Denmark coordinated by Lars Bak at Aarhus. According to Google, existing implementations were designed "for small programs, where the performance and interactivity of the system weren't that important", but web applicationssuch as Gmail "are using the web browser to the fullest when it comes to DOM manipulations andJavaScript", and therefore would significantly benefit from a JavaScript engine that could work faster.
Chrome uses the WebKit rendering engine to display web pages, on advice from the Android team.[13]Like most browsers, Chrome was extensively tested internally before release with unit testing, "automated user interface testing of scripted user actions", and fuzz testing, as well as WebKit's layout tests (99% of which Chrome is claimed to have passed). New browser builds are automatically tested against tens of thousands of commonly accessed websites inside the Google index within 20–30 minutes.[13]
The Windows version of Chrome includes Gears, which adds features for web developers typically relating to the building of web applications (including offline support).[13] However, Google is phasing out Gears in favor of HTML5.[28]
In December 2010 Google announced that to make deploying Chrome easier in a business environment they would provide an official Chrome MSI package. The normal downloaded Chrome installer puts the browser in the user's home directory and provides invisible background updates, but the MSI package will allow installation at the system level, providing system administrators control over the update process.[29] – it was formerly possible only when Chrome was installed using Google Pack. Google also created Group Policies to fine tune the behavior of Chrome in the business environment, for example setting automatic updates interval, a home page etc.[30]
On 11 January 2011 the Chrome Product manager, Mike Jazayeri, announced that Chrome will no longer support H.264 video codec for its HTML 5 player, citing the desire to bring Google Chrome more inline with the currently available open codecs available in the Chromium project, which Chrome is based on.[31]
[edit]Pre-releases
In addition to the stable build of Google chrome, Google makes several pre-release versions, or "early release channels" available. These are referred to aschannels because the browser is dynamically updated and are designated "Beta" "Dev" and "Canary". The Chrome Beta build is intended to be tested by anyone and is slightly newer than the stable version of chrome. The Dev, or developer build, is intended for users with software testing or programing experience. The Canary build is an automatically created version of the latest software from the parent Chromium project, which is not tested prior to release. As a result Google blocks the ability to set the Canary build as the user's default browser and allows it to be installed alongside another version of Chrome.[32]
[edit]Chromium
While Chromium is the parent project of Google Chrome, there are some key differences that set the two apart. Chromium, unlike the pre-release versions of Chrome, is updated almost every day, but does not include the built-in Flash Player (it has to be downloaded separately) and Google Auto-updater found in Chrome. Chromium also has a less restrictive end user licence than the compiled builds of Chrome, and does not implement user RLZ tracking, a privacyconcern.[33][34][35]
