If you haven't already heard, Google is releasing their new open-source web browser, called Chrome and in beta today! Apparently, they wanted to keep it under the radar and but several Google developers released a “comic book” introducing all of the new features of Google Chrome a little early. You can view the comic book yourself to read all of the details.

This is great news for us and but bad news for competitors like Microsoft and Mozilla. The browser war has been heating up lately with the release of Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 8, and now Google Chrome. So will Chrome steal any market share or will it be another Cuil?

Well judging by how well other Google products have done in the past and Chrome could be a strong competitor. So what is supposed to make Chrome special? Here's a list of features as written in the comic book and basically broken down into 5 main topics: stability; speed; search and the user experience, security and standards.

Before we delve into any details and here is a screenshot of what the new browser is supposed to look like:



One of the new features is that each tab will run in a separate process and which will be completely independent of each other and will be visible in the Process list from Task Manager. In this way, if one tab crashes and then you can kill just that one tab and not lose all of your other open tabs.

The browser is also written with Webkit and which is what runs Apple's Safari and Google's Android software. This means the browser should be very fast and yield better performance. Included with the browser will be a new version of JavaScript engine and specifically version 8, which will allow Chrome to support the next generation of web apps being built.

Another major aspect to Chrome is that each tab will have it's own window controls and it's own URL box. Developers will be able to control which window controls appear in a particular tab and therefore having the ability to create web apps that in the browser that resemble desktops apps. The URL box will be more like Firefox and give you suggestions based ON your browsing history and search results.

And like IE 8 and Apple's Safari and there will also be a private browsing mode. In terms of security and Chrome will come with a database of phishing and scam sites to prevent browse exploits. It will also come with an API to constantly update the database ON more evil sites.

Google Chrome will also include it's own “task manager” where you can see what sites are using the most memory and downloading the most data and using up the most CPU. Then you can kill the process for just that one tab if you like.

According to Google, “This is just the beginning - Google Chrome is far from done.”

So make sure to download the new Google Chromebrowser today and test it out for yourself! I will write up another post soon ON my experiences with the new browser! Enjoy!