Network Navigation, Riding on googles chrome

With google announcing, somewhat accidentally, the launch of its new browser google chrome, it has left a lot of web designers and developers pondering the question, do we really need another browser? After reading the cartoon google do give some good justification for why thay have chosen to create a new browser. The ability to use multi tab browsing effectively without the hinderence of slowed browser speed is one strong pro to the new system and i cant help but feel that maybe google are been very tacticle in delivering the product to PC users first. If google can break the deadlock of IE6 by getting PC uses to give up the ghost and adopt a newer, better browser, which offers a better user experience, that would be no mean feat.

But the question bothering me and indeed many others is if google felt there was nothing better out there, and thus they would have to create there own totally unique browser, why did they take mozilla’s existing code base to build upon? Further more, they claim that chrome is completely open source, so anyone can work to improve it… isnt firefox already that exact being? an open source project from start to finnish which has been a marvel for developers and web designers alike who have an array of toosl at their disposal, not to mention the end user experince.

The problem i truely have with google chrome is that its doing something, that was already done, then taking the credit. If google wanted to make a smart move they should have simply put a link to firefox on the google search page, and contributed to the open source code base which is already available. But then technically it wouldnt have been ‘all credit reserved’ google combined with the fact google would need to share its information with outsiders, heaven forbid!

Now I don’t want to put people off, my advice would be try it out, and if you cant do that (mac & linux users) try reading a couple of reviews techzilo and DevCentral have a good introductions to the topic with some screens of what to expect. But remember this, everytime a new browser walks onto the web thats another set of testing and as much as I hate to suggest it another set of hacks to make things work all over. So perhaps the only way to move forward is to step back and assess what we have, and what we need, then maybe we get the compatability sorted once and for all.