Google's Chrome "web operating system" - what it means for the web

Huge breaking news for web technologists, with implications for everyone: Google has developed a new web browser, and have drawn a cartoon to illustrate why. If you don't have time to read through the entire book, this is being hyped as a web based operating system: Each tab (website or application) is isolated in its own process and runs in its own "jail" with limited access rights. Apps can run in standalone windows. Javascript gets a new virtual machine, and a run-time compiler. Most significant of all, this is an open source project.

Here's a quick breakdown on what Google Chrome promises:

Performance: improved resource management, limit the CPU and memory a single app will use. Multi-threaded process execution will allow multiple web sites to load and execute "independently." Run-time javascript compilation should speed execution dramatically, and javascript hangs will no longer stall the browser.

Reliability: a crashed web app will only take out the tab it was under, not the whole browser with all of your other work in progress. Management UI makes it easy to hunt and kill misbehaving web critters! Closing a tab kills the process and frees up its memory, a big problem with modern browsers!

Security: Cross-site scripting gets a whole lot harder with each site running in isolated processes and with limited access rights. Simplified security model. Plugins to be isolated as well. Built in zero-day website filter.

Scalability: More web apps can be used more stably on the desktop. Google gears allows offline processing by a web application. Uncertain at this point the impact on web servers, but its a good bet that load will continue to rise, with more happy users browsing faster than ever!! Doubtless there will be new challenges here that will keep us happily in business!

Looking forward to kicking the tires in the next few days, seeing if Chrome lives up to the early hype, and sharing our experiences with other testers...

Ian