Who would have thought that a small project by a search engine would turn out to be one of world’s most popular browsers? But the small project not only became popular, but it soon caught up the race with other browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Safari. This is Chrome, the browser by Google. On September 2, 2013; the founders celebrated Google Chrome’s 5th birthday!
Google Chrome was first revealed as a beta version on September 2, 2008 for Microsoft Windows. This was rather earlier than the actual release, which was scheduled on September 3, 2008. However, this ‘accidental’ release made Chrome draw more attention than expected. Over the 5 years, Google Chrome has become a popular browser.
Google Chrome had a setback when it was released. It was compared to Mozilla Firefox due to its outlook. But unfortunately, it did not have extensions and there was no provision to manage bookmarks, like Firefox. However, the features which grabbed the eyeballs of users were really groundbreaking, considering the time it was released. Many of these features are now taken for granted by us.
Some of these features like tabs on top of a URL, instead of its underneath is something different from the other browsers. Google Chrome’s address bar is called as the ‘omnibox‘. It not only serves as an address bar, but it also poses as a search box. Users can search for bookmarks and browsing history in this ‘omnibox‘. Of course, this feature is present in Mozilla Firefox and IE as well. Its ‘Incognito mode’ is derived from IE’s ‘InPrivate’ setting, which also became one eye grabbing feature for Chrome.
On its 5th birthday, Google Chrome is catching up speed in the ‘browser war’. Though there were some setbacks earlier, these were never termed as ‘issues’ due to Google Chrome’s tremendous speedy growth. After 5 years, Chrome is all set for its version 29. Today, Chrome runs on Blink, its own layout engine based on WebKit engine by Apple.
When statistic for ‘Best browser for Windows’ are seen, Google Chrome is doing well in comparison with IE and Firefox. Chrome has certainly proved that a small project too can go a long way to become a popular browser that now runs on Android, Nexus devices and iOS devices.
