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.
"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.
"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.
