Philipp Lensen of Google Blogoscope shares a comic about Google’s open source web browser called Chrome. TechCrunch has posted leaked screenshots too. I suggest you read all those links as they explain very nicely the many, many features Google Chrome has, then try it out for yourself.
With all the revolutionary new features planned for this web browser, do the rest of the factions of the more-than-a-decade-long Browser Wars stand a chance? Let me run through several points that may or may not convince you that the ‘Wars are over:
Reworking web browser concepts
“Chrome”. Google Chrome is so named because the developers wanted to weed out all the unnecessary interface elements that get in the way of an optimal user experience. Google is pretty good at this—see Gmail.
Omnibox. I’ve complained about this before. We have too many blank bars in our browsers, why not stick to just one? Combining the ambitiousness of Firefox 3’s “AwesomeBar”, search keyword shortcuts, and Google’s mighty search engine, users might not need any other button in the toolbar.
Independent tabs and sandboxing. Chrome runs tabs as separate processes to isolate any unruly behavior, whether it’s a memory leak or malicious code.
Using Google’s assets
Webpage testing. Google will use its large—an understatement—collection of crawled websites to test if their browser is working properly on them. It will prioritize by popularity to be efficient in testing the millions, billions, and trillions of pages, of course.
Search and anti-phishing. I’ve mentioned the Omnibox. Google will incorporate its search into the singular browser bar to make finding websites a breeze. (I think AwesomeBar sounds better though.) And since Google is a pretty good keeper of blacklisted sites, Chrome also detects when a website is potentially harmful.
Google Gears. Another obvious move. Google Gears was created to make web browsing more responsive and efficient by linking together the online and offline, so it’s mandatory for Chrome to incorporate this feature.
Inspired by the best of other worlds
WebKit. WebKit is possibly the fastest and smartest browser rendering engine out there. It powers Safari and several Mac OS X applications, as well as Google Android and now Google Chrome.
Privacy Mode. Microsoft is set to introduce a history-free, cookie-free browsing feature in Internet Explorer 8 called InPrivate (though everyone else calls it “porn mode”). Now Google follows suit with “incognito browsing”.
Better JavaScript performance. Mozilla recently announced it was able to dramatically improve JavaScript loading by up to 37.5 times, a feature coming to Firefox 3.1. (Another comparable feature to Firefox is the previously-mentioned Omnibox.)
Speed Dial. Opera has sported this feature since version 9.2.
On to the questions…
Why? My answer? Because they can. Google’s answer? Watch it here. Google is the epitome of a Web 2.0 company, having revolutionized search, then e-mail, then every other activity that can be done online. It rehashed old elements of the Internet, and doing so on a browser feels like a natural extension of their work.
Does Google Chrome comply with Web Standards? Since Chrome is going to run on WebKit, can we trust that we won’t have to debug for yet another browser? Unfortunately, it failed the ACID3 test (which, on the other hand, Safari passed in version 3.2.1).
Will Google end its “search bar relationship” with Firefox and other browsers? Now that Google has its own browser, does it still need to push for the search bar feature in browsers like Firefox, IE, and Safari? Probably not. But most users will still use Google—the search engine—one way or the other. And if you’ve watched the video linked above, Sergey Brin says the general goal is to get people to use “alternative” browsers such as Firefox. (Of course, assuming that Firefox and Chrome remain minor players in the game.)
Is this a milestone in web browser history? Put another way, is this the best thing since tabbed browsing? I can’t really answer a resounding yes. Web browsers must pay attention to detail and reduce bloat—it’s a difficult balance. Google Chrome is a lean browser that contains only a few notable features. We’ll have to wait for a few more releases to see where they’re going with this.
Do you trust Google to browse in its browser? Between a proof-of-concept security flaw discovered hours after the browser’s release and a questionable (but recently modified) license agreement, are you confident in using yet another Google product? This is perhaps the biggest question of all.
By “normal people” I mean those who are mere computer users, not literates nor enthusiasts nor experts. Cabel shares a striking example: in Japan, advertisers instruct potential buyers to enter specific keywords into search engines instead of their company URLs.
Clearly, a sufficient amount of search engine optimization is necessary for this to work, especially for the really famous and common-name brands. But this behavior of accessing websites did not arise because these companies have told us to do so. Neither is it limited to this Asian country.
I am sure you have at least one friend or loved one who has not grasped the concept of URLs and remains highly dependent on Google for finding their way around the web. If you’ll take a closer look at their web browsers, you’ll see why it really isn’t their fault.
Google invades the browsers
Most of the weird behavior we observe from other people is because they have Google as their homepage or built into their browsers. (You can also change the word “Google” to your favorite search engine of choice.) This usually comes in three flavors:
- the Google homepage (whether it’s plain vanilla, a Firefox-Google hybrid, or iGoogle)
- the Google search engine add-on (a common feature in all modern browsers)
- the Google Toolbar
As a result, users now have several blank input bars staring back at them—the address bar, the browser search bar, the Google Toolbar search bar, and the Google homepage search bar. Guess which one they’ll choose?
With the icons and text that draw one’s attention toward the Google search bars, the address bar fades more and more into the background. And since non-techie people are usually afraid of “breaking the computer”, they stick to a method that works well, which is to keep using Google.
Ignore or eradicate?
We can’t blame Google for trying to be the #1 product in our virtual lives; we can only be wary. But it should share the responsibility of educating users of how to use the Internet (how silly does that sound?) with the browsers. Unfortunately neither parties seem to care because: (a) Google would much rather have users search for sites than visit them through URLs directly; and (b) the browsers are earning money precisely because Google is paying them to have their search bars built-in.
Now, learning how to use the interface that lets one use the Internet is only halfway of the journey; choosing to use Google to wade through the Web is not necessarily a bad practice, as Jakob Nielsen predicted that this would become commonplace. But he also believes URLs will have to go.
In the long term, it is not appropriate to require unique words to identify every single entity in the world. That’s not how human language works.
The very nature of URLs seems to be another major stumbling block. Ordinary people don’t understand the use of a “www” and a “.com”, or that the “@” symbol is used only in e-mail addresses. They don’t know how to share websites through URLs either—unless there’s a button with explicit instructions that tell them how.
Add to that the explosion of all the domain suffixes like .me, .travel, and even .xxx. Not to mention all the malicious parties that wish to take advantage of their ignorance—stealing and spoofing personal information through misspelled URLs, search keywords, and deceptive e-mails.
The question is, if normal people aren’t using URLs anymore, what system can be built to replace them? Will it work? Or is Google doing a fine job already?
A few weeks ago Google announced that it can now extract and index textual content from Adobe Flash files. We all know that creating websites in pure Flash is a big no-no if you care about being found through search engines. So is there nothing left that’s stopping web designers from switching from plain old HTML and CSS to rich interactive Flash? I have yet to find somebody who agrees with a resounding “yes!”
Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, believes that this new development isn’t compelling enough to start building sites with Flash.
Flash content is fundamentally different from HTML on webpage URLs and being able to parse links in the Flash code and text snippets does not make Flash search-engine friendly. I think it’s great that Google’s digging deeper into Flash, but I don’t believe web developers should be any less wary than they’ve been in the past about Flash-based websites or Flash-embedded content.
If anything, I commend Google for continuing to convince web designers and search engine marketers alike to embrace web standards by pushing for the best practices in coding websites. Of course it’s the most logical thing both parties: search spiders need to parse content properly so that they can index it, and a well-formed webpage makes this possible; webmasters need not wade through nested tables and unnecessary tag soup when there’s a better way. And Google should, since it’s way more influential than Opera or any other web company out there.
However, Google’s efforts to read Flash still seem to be in the premature stages. Typical Google, they always release their products in beta without being wary of the consequences.
By consequences I mean clients who are now running around telling their web designers to create animated intros and the extravagant interfaces for their websites. I can’t really shoot down this little achievement by Google—except that it’s getting scarily smarter everyday and should try to have more features than issues when they launch a product.
More importantly, I can only continue to condemn those who misuse Flash without any regard for accessibility, much less usability, whatsoever.
This comes as a surprise. Aux of Cogent Metal is vehemently against webpages that have narrow layout widths. And I thought web designers are now more worried about the opposite: the wide layouts that whip out the horizontal scrollbars in resolutions narrower than 1024×768.
This is another proof that you can’t guess every possible reaction to a design pattern. In this case Aux would rather have wide layouts because it would mean a larger area to present content. But what can you do about someone just like Aux, but who believes the complete opposite?
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