Word surfaced Monday of a Web "comic book" introducing Google Chrome,
the search giant's long-rumored open-source browser project. While the
illustrations, created by cartoonist Scott McCloud, were not announced by Google, they do contain the quotes and likenesses of 19 Google developers.

You can read the whole book here >> Google chrome browser comic

A Web comic, reposted on Google Blogoscoped, introduces Google Chrome.

(Credit: Google Blogoscoped)

The detailed, 38-page comic appeared on Google Blogoscoped,
an unofficial Google blog. (The link to the comic has been down
intermittently.) The book is broken down into five main sections
covering stability; speed; search and the user experience, security,
and standards. Here are the key features, according to the book:

Browser tabs will be detachable.

(Credit: Google Blogoscoped)

Stability
Each tab will run in its own process. These
processes will be completely isolated from each other, will be killable
from the operating system's process manager, and will be sandboxed to
prevent them from accessing information on the user's computer. This
architecture should lead to a more stable and more consistent browsing
experience--performance of the browser should not degrade over time.

Google is using its search index to prioritize testing of the
browser--the pages that are linked to the most from Google Search are
getting the most automated hits to make sure Chrome is behaving
correctly on them.

Speed

The browser is being written with WebKit,
the open-source engine at the core of Apple's Safari and Google's
Android. The browser is also getting a new Javascript virtual machine,
V8. It's said to be a better solution for complex and rich Web
applications--it should yield better performance as well as "smoother
drag and drops" in interactive applications.

Search and user experience
In Chrome, browser tabs will take
over the interface, becoming the primary navigational element. Each tab
will get its own window controls. Users will be able to tear off tabs
into standalone windows. (Related: developers will be able to control
which window controls appear in a tab, creating, if they wish, Web
applications that are embedded in a browser but that appear to be more
like traditional desktop apps.)

Chrome's URL entry field will be called the "Omnibox," and,
like Mozilla's "Awesome bar," will feed you suggestions based on your
browsing history and live search results. It will be respectful of
users, the comic says: "Inline completions will never flicker, never
flash. It's perfect, aesthetically non-distracting."

Chrome will integrate URL entry and search queries into the Omnibox.

(Credit: Google Blogoscoped)

The browser's default start page will show thumbnails of the user's
most frequently visited pages and a list of their top searches. There
will also be a private browsing mode, as IE 8 has.

Security
Chrome's architecture lends itself to secure
browsing. Each Web page, or tab, runs in its own process, and is
blocked from accessing other processes on the computer. "We've taking
the existing process boundary," the comic says, "and made it into a
jail." Different and more flexible permissions are being developed for
plug-ins, however.

A database and API to access phishing and scam sites will be
used in Chrome (and made public), which will hopefully reduce
"zero-day" scam exploits. The browser will be constantly updated with
this information.

Standards

The browser will be released as an open-source project. Also, Google will build the open-source local runtime Gears into the browser, and is hoping that it is taking up widely to "improve the base functionality of all browsers."

Yes, this is big
CNET News.com Editor in Chief Dan Farber's
analysis of Google Chrome Monday was this: "It would be in line with
other Google open-source projects, such as OpenSocial and Google Gears. Creating a competitor to Firefox, as well as Internet Explorer and Opera, could spur more innovation."

"Open sourcing the code is a smart way to avoid the 'Google
wants to take over the world' fear, but it seems that Google has
ambitions to create a comprehensive Internet operating system,
including a browser, applications, middleware and cloud
infrastructure."

The browser's start page will show thumbnails or previews of the user's most visited sites.

(Credit: Google Blogoscoped)

The official post from google blog

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A fresh take on the browser

At Google, we have a saying: “launch early and iterate.” While this
approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to
our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit
"send" a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source
browser, Google Chrome. As we believe in access to information for
everyone, we've now made the comic publicly available -- you can find
it here. We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.

So
why are we launching Google Chrome? Because we believe we can add value
for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the web.

All
of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We
search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare
time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends -- all
using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began
seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started
from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that
the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive
applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What
we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for
web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.

On
the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and
simple. To most people, it isn't the browser that matters. It's only a
tool to run the important stuff -- the pages, sites and applications
that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome
is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want
to go.

Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a
browser that runs today's complex web applications much better. 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. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also
built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next
generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's
browsers.

This is just the beginning -- Google Chrome is far
from done. We're releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader
discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work
building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it
even faster and more robust.

We owe a great debt to many open
source projects, and we're committed to continuing on their path. We've
used components from Apple's WebKit and Mozilla's Firefox, among others
-- and in that spirit, we are making all of our code open source as
well. We hope to collaborate with the entire community to help drive
the web forward.

The web gets better with more options and
innovation. Google Chrome is another option, and we hope it contributes
to making the web even better.

So check in again tomorrow to try Google Chrome for yourself. We'll post an update here as soon as it's ready.

*Update @ 3:30 PM: We've added a link to our comic book explaining Google Chrome.

Posted by Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management, and Linus Upson, Engineering Director

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Will you ditch firefox for crome???