Free Browser "Google Chrome"

The new Web browser that Google released Tuesday is designed to expand its huge lead in the Internet search market and reduce Microsoft's imprint on personal computers.

The free browser, called "Chrome," is being promoted as a sleeker, faster and more secure alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which has been the leading vehicle for surfing the Web for the past decade. Despite recent inroads by Mozilla Foundation's Firefox, Internet Explorer is still used by roughly three-fourths of the world's Web surfers.

Google have announced plans to take on Microsoft and Firefox with their own open-source browser, codenamed Chrome, by releasing a specially drawn comic by Scott McCloud explaining the app. Based on the existing Webkit rendering engine, Chrome will integrate not only tab-based browsing but Google Gears and a newly integrated search and address system called Omnibox.

Omnibox will replace the individual address and search boxes and offer search suggestions, popular pages and history pages. It will also automatically replicate a webpage’s own search box, allowing site and query strings to be entered simultaneously. An Amazon search, for instance, could be triggered by entering “amazon”, pressing tab and then the search term.

Chrome will also include some of the more popular features from existing rivals. It will have a homepage of nine instant-access shortcut thumbnails, as found in Opera 9, with a sidebar of recent searches and tabs. The tabs themselves will be switched to above the window, not below it as on Firefox, and there’ll be a privacy option similar to Internet Explorer’s recently announced InPrivate mode, in which no record of sites or searches will be stored. A malware and phishing protection system will be integrated and constantly updated, with Chrome automatically downloading a list of dangerous sites in the background.