Google Chrome
New open source WebKit-based (yay!) browser from Google, which was announced by accident today via a 38-page comic. From what I could gather before I got bored with the comic, they’re aiming to improve performance and stability in today’s Ajax-based web applications. For example, it runs each tab in a separate process, so a crash only brings down the one tab, and not the entire browser; and includes a new, faster, JavaScript engine. Google is also leveraging its huge crawling infrastructure to test Chrome builds against tens of thousands of the most popular sites on the Web; I find it very remarkable because it’s a resource other browser makers don’t have, and will probably help a lot in improving the browser.
It’s an interesting initiative from Google, although I’m not sure if there’s a lot of demand for a new browser, specially since the mainstream users probably won’t care too much about multi-process tabs and other technical mumbo-jumbo; and the fact that it’s more stable might not be enough incentive to make them switch.
