Design Sapling.com

Google recently released it’s browser, Chrome, in beta for Windows.

Evidently, Mozilla is not worried. Google funds the majority of Mozillas expenses in return for a default Google homepage and search engine in Firefox.

The UI is innovative and well done, including a feature similar to the Speed Dial found in Opera (also a a great Firefox extension). More profound is it’s more secure and efficient JavaScript engine. A little more competition in the browser market is great. Firefox may take a small hit, but Google recently renewed their deal with Mozilla until 2011, so no financial worries for a few years. Anything to either reduce IE market share or force Microsoft to fix their browser is progress. I bet Chrome will push many browsers developers to be a bit more innovative, including Opera and Mozilla.

Web developers should be aware that Chrome’s rendering engine is Webkit, the same as Apple’s Safari. Any page that doesn’t render correctly in Safari will look the same in Chrome, so know may be the time to fix those rendering bugs. Chrome is advertised right on the Google search page, so expect a lot of people to start using it.

To learn more about Chrome, check out Google’s Chrome comic by Scott McCloud.