Out-Law News 1 min. read

Google launches web browser with privacy mode


Google will release an internet browser called Google Chrome today that could challenge the dominance of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox on consumer desktops.

The browser is open source and therefore modifiable by users or other companies, and is designed to be more stable and secure than other browsers.

Like Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3, Google Chrome will offer a mode of use that is designed to protect users' privacy.

Comic strip panel on privacy by Scott McCloud and the Google Chrome Team, reproduced with permission."Google Chrome has a privacy mode. You can create an 'incognito' window and nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer," said Google in its introduction to the browser, which takes the form of an online comic book.

"It's a read-only mode: you can still access your bookmarks, but none of your history is saved in the browser, and when you close the window, the cookies from that session are wiped out," it said.

Google claims that because it is writing a browser from scratch and not modifying an older base of software code, it is better able to address the problems faced by browser users now. It claims that the browser will be better able to battle security problems because each tab within the browser window will be an isolated environment.

Comic strip panel on privacy by Scott McCloud and the Google Chrome Team, reproduced with permission."Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today's complex web applications much better," said Google vice president of product management Sundar Pichai and engineering director Linus Upson in an official Google blog. "By keeping each tab in an isolated 'sandbox', we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites."

The interaction between the browser and the computer running it is strictly controlled to enhance security. It cannot write information to the host computer's hard drive or start new programmes automatically or read files from sensitive areas of the computer such as the desktop or 'my documents' folder.

Google admitted in its comic book-style explanation of the system, though, that while it can improve the security around many features of the browser there is little that it can do about plug-ins. Plug-ins are pieces of software code that run inside a browser and are problematic because they use external software code.

Google said that plug-ins represented a vulnerability, but that overall it had greatly reduced the browser's vulnerability to attack.

Google also said that it is maintaining a list of malicious websites and that Chrome will warn users when they try to visit one of those sites.

Google said that the browser would be available today for downloading in 100 countries by users of Microsoft's Windows operating system.

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