Out of the blue, Google Chrome saw the light on September 2, and managed to receive a market share of 1% within the day. This is for a new browser a very remarkable achievement. Chrome was on that particular day the 3rd most used browser (on the Windows platform).

Current market share

Now, almost two months later, we see the hype diminishing. Market share figures now show a stable percentage of approx 0.6% – 0.8%

source: Marketshare

Benefits Chrome for the end-user

• Reliability. Because every instance of website/application is opened in a new process that is independent of the main browser process, Chrome will not crash if one of the websites/applications freezes/crashes.

• Speed. Chrome loads fast, and has a very powerful JavaScript interpreter (V8).

• Simplicity. The interface of Chrome is just as clean as Google’s search engine. There are no superfluous buttons or bars, which results in much space available for the website.

• Chrome integrated all search functionality within the “Omnibox”, Google’s naming for the URL-box.

Disadvantages for the end-user

• Privacy. A lot has been discussed online about Chrome monitoring and collecting user data and user behavior. Google tried it’s best to make us believe that this is not the case, but we all know in what market segment Google operates …

• Safety. There still are many holes in the security layer of the current version of Chrome.

• Reliability. A percentage of the current website and applications are not (yet) compatible with Chrome.

• Support. There are only a few add-ons available for Chrome. It remains to be seen how Chrome is going to relate itself to the large supply of add-ons available for Firefox.

Compatibility web applications with Chrome

Chrome is built on the WebKit render engine, which is also used by Safari and Konquerer. According to Google, every website/application that is compatible with Safari 3.1 should also behave correctly within Chrome. End-users and developers can submit bugs and feature requests through the website of chromium.

A new JavaScript engine

One of the most important parts of a web browser is its JavaScript engine. Web applications cannot be snappy and stable without a fast and reliable JavaScript engine. Chrome uses V8. Google developed this engine with a strong focus on performance.  We also see huge performance improvements within the beta versions of the latest engines from WebKit, Mozilla and Firefox. The current browser war seems to be all about performance, which is very good news for both end-user and developer. Increases in speed, as demonstrated in the benchmarks and real-live tests, will be of great benefit for dynamic (AJAX) applications.

source: ZDNet.com

source: ZDNet.com

Overall quality

The newest generation web browsers are all catching up in the field of performance, standard compliancy and stability. Performance tests as shown above teach us that these browsers can very well compete with each other in terms of speed. Compared to the current generation browsers however, they differ as day and night.

It also seems that meeting web standards is finally becoming commonplace within browser development. See below how each browser scores in the ACID3 test. What strikes me though is that Microsoft, even with the newest IE8, is apparently not capable of developing a browser that shines in standard-compliancy.

The future of Chrome

Google developed Chrome not only as a browser, but also as a platform to run web-based applications. Google wants to create momentum with the rollout of its Cloud Operating System, and to be able to do that Google needed a browser that makes all that possible. A browser in which applications like Gmail, Google Docs and Google Video run as fast and stable as possible. A browser in which performance, multitasking, security and platform independency are assured. Giving the importance for Google to make this browser a success, and the market penetration that Google has at the moment, I think that, despite the current decline in market share figures, Chrome will become a major player in the browser scene.

How do we cope with Chrome?

• We must not underestimate Chrome; even now the market share figures are lower than a month ago. As I pointed out, Chrome could become a large player in the field. That means that we have to add Chrome to the packet of browsers in which we test our websites and applications.

• Chrome uses WebKit, so sites and applications that survive a standard-compliancy test in Safari, will most probably also behave well in Chrome.

• Chrome uses a new JavaScript engine (V8). That means that every JavaScript solution must be tested thoroughly within Chrome.

Tags: chrome, Google