The Google Channel

September 02, 2008

There's a new comic book hero and it's well...a Web browser. Google launches Google Chrome Tuesday, its new Web browser and part of the launch includes an 8-page online comic book explaining the browser. Actually, the comic book was posted a bit earlier than it was supposed to, according to Google, but it's now publicly available. "We hit 'send' a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome. As we believe in access to information for everyone, we've now made the comic publicly available. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome [Tuesday] in more than 100 countries," wrote Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management, and Linus Upson, engineering director, in Google's official blog.

So what is Google Chrome anyway and why do you need a new Web browser?

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company developed Chrome based on the assumption that Web use has evolved beyond simple text passages to more interactive applications, according to Pichai and Upson.

"Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there," they wrote in the blog. "We needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build."

The browser will retain a clean and simple look, but will be capable of running more complex Web applications, according to the company. "By keeping each tab in an isolated 'sandbox', we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites," the Google team wrote. Chrome includes V8, a more powerful JavaScript engine, and is available in Beta for Windows and it is working on versions for Mac and Linux. "We owe a great debt to many open source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path. We've used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others -- and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive the web forward," according to Google's blog.