Google Chrome browser: still super-fast

I’ve been getting deep into Google’s many services, and today is no exception. First I discovered a bunch of features in Gmail (Web version, print version) that are turning out to be really helpful.

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I’m using the Google Chrome browser again on my XP box today, since I’m working on our Google fire map and feeding it data from a Google Spreadsheet.

I’m also going to be looking into creating a private Web page for company use at Google Sites, which is targeted as an easy-to-use alternative to corporate Intranets. It’s also a place where you can set up a site just for your family, friends or whoever. If you wish, you can control who gets access to the pages, a feature I will be tapping for this project.

Back to Google Chrome. It’s still incredibly fast, and I can’t wait until it’s ported to OS X and Linux. As I’ve said, it doesn’t have quite the feature set of, say, Firefox, but for the most part I don’t need any of those features and will easily give them up for increased speed on the 99.9 percent of stuff that Chrome does so well.

The hidden power of Gmail, the increasing reach of everything Google and the inevitability of cloud computing

I haven’t made a secret of the fact that I’ve never really delved into Google’s Gmail, even though I automatically have an account due to my much heavier use of Google Docs and previous use of Google Groups.

All that changed in recent weeks due to my ISP DSL Extreme‘s decision to transfer all of its mail accounts from its own servers to Gmail.

I mainly use my DSL Extreme e-mail address for mailing lists. I have my OpenBSD and Debian mailing list traffic — which can be considerable — on that e-mail address just to keep it separate from the rest of my mail.

I never did like the DSL Extreme Web mail interface, and the fact that it’s going away in a week doesn’t bother me one bit.

But since DSL Extreme allowed users appropriately extreme flexibility in handling their mail, I’ve used it consistently, just not in a Web interface.

Instead I’ve used external mail clients — particularly Thunderbird in Windows — to process the mail, accessing it via IMAP and filtering it into folders that live on the server.

Since the connection to the mail servers can be fully encrypted and of the IMAP or POP variety, I’ve used my account fairly regularly.

My “lifestyle,” whatever that means, makes IMAP work way better for me than POP, which downloads mail to a single computer, and since I’m in front of a half-dozen different computers in different places, POP doesn’t work for me at all.

I was worried that the transition to Gmail for my DSL Extreme account would mean that POP and IMAP access would be gone, and I would be limited to the unfamiliar Gmail Web interface only.

But that is not the case. I can read the mail via POP or IMAP with any mail client software, and now I have a lot more space — about 7 GB, even though I can’t ever see needing that much.

And I’ve discovered a few rudimentary things about the Gmail interface that just might have me using it more and more — and dumping traditional mail clients entirely.

Right now, the reason is organization. I’ve relied on the folders and filters of Thunderbird to bring some semblance of order to the heavy volume of mailing-list traffic I receive.

I’m limited only by the folders themselves. A message can only be in a single folder at a time, and that makes finding things difficult in some instances.

But Gmail uses labels instead of folders, and an individual e-mail message can have as many or as few labels as I wish. So I can, for instance have a message from the debian-user mailing list begin its life with the labels INBOX and Debian. I can delete it if I don’t need it, and that’s what happens most of the time. But if I want to save that e-mail, I can remove the INBOX and Debian labels and effectively archive the conversation by giving it a Debian Saved label.

The other way Gmail helps me with mailing-list messages in specific, and the rest of my e-mail in general, is by grouping messages that are replies to each other together when I read one of the messages in that particular group. I think this is what Gmail refers to as “conversations,” but again, I’m so new at this that I’m unsure of the terminology.

What I am sure of is that this labeling and grouping, which at first looks more than a bit forbidding, is in fact quite useful.

Another thing Google does with Gmail is bring together all of the Google services I use (and many I don’t but just might try).

I’m already using the Google Chrome browser to access Gmail, and when I click a link called Sites, I have the option to create secure Web pages, gather information on them and control who has access to them. In short, it’s a great, free tool for collaboration over the Web. In that way, it’s a valuable extension to Google Docs (also easily navigable to from the Gmail interface), which is already performing very well as a collaborative tool used by many of us at the Daily News.

I’m trying to use Google Docs to bring some kind of order to my own documents. I’ll have to get back to you on that one. I finally do have offline access to Docs (via the Google Gears API), and I’m less than impressed with its reliability and speed on my Gateway 1.3 GHz/1 GB RAM laptop. Gears and offline Docs are both still relatively young, so there’s plenty of room for improvement.

One more thing: Chat.

Since I’ve been guesting in the Op-Ed department for the past week and a couple days, I’m not on my own PC, and as a result all my usual apps, from Pidgin to Thunderbird to Notepad++ and Filezilla are not installed.

I did add Google Chrome after Firefox 2 started acting up on me. And on this PC, Internet Explorer 7 has actually been less of a dog than I remember. I did get the installer for FF 3, but I’ve yet to do the install.

I said I was going to get to chat … and I am.

Since I didn’t have Pidgin, which I use to bring my Yahoo!, AOL/AIM and Google chat accounts under one app, I switched from the “Classic” Yahoo Mail Web interface to the “All-New” version of Yahoo Mail, which is designed to look and act like a traditional local mail client, with drag-and-drop capability.

The reason I haven’t been using the “new” interface until now is that its relatively large graphical load doesn’t play well with some of my, ahem, older hardware, and the speed of the “old” Yahoo Mail is very much needed on those creaky laptops and desktops.

To make a long story somewhat shorter, I opted for the “new” Yahoo Mail so I could use the integrated Yahoo Messengher client. When you want to chat with one of your Yahoo contacts, all you do is click on their name, and a chat window opens in your mail interface. That way, you can use Yahoo Messenger without needing to have the application installed on your computer.

Now I’m bringing things around to my point, which is Google. Google’s chat service — Google Talk — has a “gadget” that mimics a standalone IM applications but can be used on any PC with a compatible Web browser. That way you can use Google Talk from just about any Web-connected PC without worrying about individual clients or Pidgin.

I only have one person who I use Google Talk to IM, so I’m probably better off using Pidgin if I can, but it’s nice to see so much innovation in chat from Google and Yahoo. For all I know, AIM has the same capability, but since I’ve probably checked my AOL mail … maybe once or twice … since I first signed up for AIM a few years ago, I know nothing about it. I also remember AOL Mail as offering IMAP and POP to its users, and for that reason alone it might be well worth investigating as a mail solution.

Note: I remember hearing that Google was “rolling out” IMAP access to Gmail users and not granting it to all at once. Since my DSL Extreme account is not part of the regular Gmail throng, I appear to have both IMAP and POP as part of the deal between DSL Extreme and Google.

Summing up: A bit long and rambly, don’t you think? I’m just trying to think out loud about how deep I’m getting into the world of Google and its services.

There’s been a loud, long argument in the free, open-source software community (and at LXer in particular) about what cloud computing means for open-source software, users, freedom and all of that. For me, the freedom to have my files live in the cloud and be accessed from anywhere I’m networked is trumping almost everything else.

I’d love for the Google Docs interface to get more sophisticated about things like indented paragraphs and smart quotes — two of my typographical pet peeves. The technology is there, since Docs is based on HTML and CSS and can do anything that those two sophisticated technologies allow (and that is quite a lot).

And as I’ve said more than a few times recently, having the option of working with my cloud-based files either through Web interfaces or via the same kinds of locally based applications we all use today is something I’m very interested in seeing happen. It’s kind of ironic that the company I see buying into this concept (although their plans and offerings are presented in such a cryptic way that I can never really tell just what they’re planning) is Microsoft.

Yes, Microsoft’s dependence on traditional apps like MS Office and the billions it brings them has profoundly affected the company’s strategy for cloud-based data and apps. At the end of the day, a melding of local client apps that are not necessarily Web browsers could very well be more efficient than doing everything through the browser. (Or not; it’s too early to tell at this point).

The more data we have, from text files to images, audio and video, is increasingly hard to get a handle on. We need help storing, backing up, categorizing and utilizing all of this data. In my mind, it all points to the cloud.

Depending on how you look at it, it’s a little “Matrix”-y, “HAL 9000”-ish, “Neuromancer”-like

All I know is that Sun’s “The Network Is the Computer” mantra is becoming more true every day. Some of that will be good, some not. And that goodness/other will differ from person to person, application to application and entity to entity.

We won’t be limited to the huge cloud providers. There will still be traditional servers everywhere, along with clients in more shapes, sizes and guises than you could imagine. And the lone-PC-in-the-wilderness won’t go away, just as paper itself has survived in this most computer-infused of ages.

But the cloud model is real. And it’s growing.

Companies that understand this will prosper, others not so much.

The hidden power of Gmail, the increasing reach of everything Google and the inevitability of cloud computing

I haven’t made a secret of the fact that I’ve never really delved into Google’s Gmail, even though I automatically have an account due to my much heavier use of Google Docs and previous use of Google Groups.

All that changed in recent weeks due to my ISP DSL Extreme‘s decision to transfer all of its mail accounts from its own servers to Gmail.

I mainly use my DSL Extreme e-mail address for mailing lists. I have my OpenBSD and Debian mailing list traffic — which can be considerable — on that e-mail address just to keep it separate from the rest of my mail.

I never did like the DSL Extreme Web mail interface, and the fact that it’s going away in a week doesn’t bother me one bit.

But since DSL Extreme allowed users appropriately extreme flexibility in handling their mail, I’ve used it consistently, just not in a Web interface.

Instead I’ve used external mail clients — particularly Thunderbird in Windows — to process the mail, accessing it via IMAP and filtering it into folders that live on the server.

Since the connection to the mail servers can be fully encrypted and of the IMAP or POP variety, I’ve used my account fairly regularly.

My “lifestyle,” whatever that means, makes IMAP work way better for me than POP, which downloads mail to a single computer, and since I’m in front of a half-dozen different computers in different places, POP doesn’t work for me at all.

I was worried that the transition to Gmail for my DSL Extreme account would mean that POP and IMAP access would be gone, and I would be limited to the unfamiliar Gmail Web interface only.

But that is not the case. I can read the mail via POP or IMAP with any mail client software, and now I have a lot more space — about 7 GB, even though I can’t ever see needing that much.

And I’ve discovered a few rudimentary things about the Gmail interface that just might have me using it more and more — and dumping traditional mail clients entirely.

Right now, the reason is organization. I’ve relied on the folders and filters of Thunderbird to bring some semblance of order to the heavy volume of mailing-list traffic I receive.

I’m limited only by the folders themselves. A message can only be in a single folder at a time, and that makes finding things difficult in some instances.

But Gmail uses labels instead of folders, and an individual e-mail message can have as many or as few labels as I wish. So I can, for instance have a message from the debian-user mailing list begin its life with the labels INBOX and Debian. I can delete it if I don’t need it, and that’s what happens most of the time. But if I want to save that e-mail, I can remove the INBOX and Debian labels and effectively archive the conversation by giving it a Debian Saved label.

The other way Gmail helps me with mailing-list messages in specific, and the rest of my e-mail in general, is by grouping messages that are replies to each other together when I read one of the messages in that particular group. I think this is what Gmail refers to as “conversations,” but again, I’m so new at this that I’m unsure of the terminology.

What I am sure of is that this labeling and grouping, which at first looks more than a bit forbidding, is in fact quite useful.

Another thing Google does with Gmail is bring together all of the Google services I use (and many I don’t but just might try).

I’m already using the Google Chrome browser to access Gmail, and when I click a link called Sites, I have the option to create secure Web pages, gather information on them and control who has access to them. In short, it’s a great, free tool for collaboration over the Web. In that way, it’s a valuable extension to Google Docs (also easily navigable to from the Gmail interface), which is already performing very well as a collaborative tool used by many of us at the Daily News.

I’m trying to use Google Docs to bring some kind of order to my own documents. I’ll have to get back to you on that one. I finally do have offline access to Docs (via the Google Gears API), and I’m less than impressed with its reliability and speed on my Gateway 1.3 GHz/1 GB RAM laptop. Gears and offline Docs are both still relatively young, so there’s plenty of room for improvement.

One more thing: Chat.

Since I’ve been guesting in the Op-Ed department for the past week and a couple days, I’m not on my own PC, and as a result all my usual apps, from Pidgin to Thunderbird to Notepad++ and Filezilla are not installed.

I did add Google Chrome after Firefox 2 started acting up on me. And on this PC, Internet Explorer 7 has actually been less of a dog than I remember. I did get the installer for FF 3, but I’ve yet to do the install.

I said I was going to get to chat … and I am.

Since I didn’t have Pidgin, which I use to bring my Yahoo!, AOL/AIM and Google chat accounts under one app, I switched from the “Classic” Yahoo Mail Web interface to the “All-New” version of Yahoo Mail, which is designed to look and act like a traditional local mail client, with drag-and-drop capability.

The reason I haven’t been using the “new” interface until now is that its relatively large graphical load doesn’t play well with some of my, ahem, older hardware, and the speed of the “old” Yahoo Mail is very much needed on those creaky laptops and desktops.

To make a long story somewhat shorter, I opted for the “new” Yahoo Mail so I could use the integrated Yahoo Messengher client. When you want to chat with one of your Yahoo contacts, all you do is click on their name, and a chat window opens in your mail interface. That way, you can use Yahoo Messenger without needing to have the application installed on your computer.

Now I’m bringing things around to my point, which is Google. Google’s chat service — Google Talk — has a “gadget” that mimics a standalone IM applications but can be used on any PC with a compatible Web browser. That way you can use Google Talk from just about any Web-connected PC without worrying about individual clients or Pidgin.

I only have one person who I use Google Talk to IM, so I’m probably better off using Pidgin if I can, but it’s nice to see so much innovation in chat from Google and Yahoo. For all I know, AIM has the same capability, but since I’ve probably checked my AOL mail … maybe once or twice … since I first signed up for AIM a few years ago, I know nothing about it. I also remember AOL Mail as offering IMAP and POP to its users, and for that reason alone it might be well worth investigating as a mail solution.

Note: I remember hearing that Google was “rolling out” IMAP access to Gmail users and not granting it to all at once. Since my DSL Extreme account is not part of the regular Gmail throng, I appear to have both IMAP and POP as part of the deal between DSL Extreme and Google.

Summing up: A bit long and rambly, don’t you think? I’m just trying to think out loud about how deep I’m getting into the world of Google and its services.

There’s been a loud, long argument in the free, open-source software community (and at LXer in particular) about what cloud computing means for open-source software, users, freedom and all of that. For me, the freedom to have my files live in the cloud and be accessed from anywhere I’m networked is trumping almost everything else.

I’d love for the Google Docs interface to get more sophisticated about things like indented paragraphs and smart quotes — two of my typographical pet peeves. The technology is there, since Docs is based on HTML and CSS and can do anything that those two sophisticated technologies allow (and that is quite a lot).

And as I’ve said more than a few times recently, having the option of working with my cloud-based files either through Web interfaces or via the same kinds of locally based applications we all use today is something I’m very interested in seeing happen. It’s kind of ironic that the company I see buying into this concept (although their plans and offerings are presented in such a cryptic way that I can never really tell just what they’re planning) is Microsoft.

Yes, Microsoft’s dependence on traditional apps like MS Office and the billions it brings them has profoundly affected the company’s strategy for cloud-based data and apps. At the end of the day, a melding of local client apps that are not necessarily Web browsers could very well be more efficient than doing everything through the browser. (Or not; it’s too early to tell at this point).

The more data we have, from text files to images, audio and video, is increasingly hard to get a handle on. We need help storing, backing up, categorizing and utilizing all of this data. In my mind, it all points to the cloud.

Depending on how you look at it, it’s a little “Matrix”-y, “HAL 9000”-ish, “Neuromancer”-like

All I know is that Sun’s “The Network Is the Computer” mantra is becoming more true every day. Some of that will be good, some not. And that goodness/other will differ from person to person, application to application and entity to entity.

We won’t be limited to the huge cloud providers. There will still be traditional servers everywhere, along with clients in more shapes, sizes and guises than you could imagine. And the lone-PC-in-the-wilderness won’t go away, just as paper itself has survived in this most computer-infused of ages.

But the cloud model is real. And it’s growing.

Companies that understand this will prosper, others not so much.

Google Chrome: Still impressive, yet incomplete

I’m using Google Chrome again today in XP, and I continue to be impressed by its speed if nothing else.

So far, I’m having a lot of luck with pages being rendered correctly, and did I mention that it’s fast?

I like being able to shuffle the tabs around. I never did that before, and in Chrome they just look like they should be shuffled. Then I tried the same thing in Firefox. You can shuffle the tabs there, too. Kinda funny, huh? Something about Chrome made me think about doing something that I could’ve been doing in Firefox all along.

I won’t really be able to evaluate Google Chrome until they release the Linux and Mac ports. I wonder how long it will be.

When I first installed Google Chrome, I imported my Firefox bookmarks. All 900 and something of them.

As far as managing those bookmarks, all I can seemingly do is drag them around. Right-clicking on a given bookmark allows for some options, but it’s just not enough to manage hundreds of bookmarks and folders.

I guess it’s all part of making the app intuitive, like the Mac, for which nobody ever wants to read any kind of manual or docs at any time.

You can drag bookmarks and bookmark folders from the list of bookmarks to the bookmark bar. And you can shuffle them around. Again, you can probably do this sort of thing in Firefox, too, but I never thought to do so.

Google Chrome: More polish than you’d expect on the first day of release

Besides yesterday’s overly long post on the new Google Chrome browser, I also cranked out a shorter, better-written piece for the Daily News. Here’s an excerpt:

On the surface, Google Chrome seems simple, almost Spartan in appearance. There aren’t tons of menus. That might frustrate “advanced” users but will be welcomed by average Web surfers.

I don’t think Chrome will stay simple for long. Expect Google to continue tweaking it in the months ahead, adding features and functionality at a rapid pace. Can Firefox and Internet Explorer compete with Chrome? It won’t be easy, but it is possible. It’s hard to keep up with the world’s king of search. And, like it or not, Google’s bold move with Chrome might represent the beginning of a new era on the desktop and the Internet.

Or it could be just another Web browser.

Google Chrome: shiny, new, mysterious … and did I mention mysterious

As is customary when a brand-new product makes its debut with great fanfare, developing an opinion about what it means now and for the future is at turns extremely easy and all but impossible.

And yes, I do have an article about my first impressions of the Google Chrome browser coming out in Wednesday’s Daily News. I also have a long entry here outlining my initial opinion of the app and what it means to Google, the industry and the world in general.

On one level, it’s just a Web browser. We’ve got tons of them.

But on another level, it’s a Web browser. The most-used computer application on the planet, and Google’s now making one.

Chrome has the potential to give Google unprecendented control over how its advertising and Web-based applications are delivered and used.

Is that a good thing?

Applications and the data that go with them are moving to the cloud — to servers out there somewhere, managed by giants like Amazon, IBM and Google — and the way we interact with those applications is, by and large, the Web browser.

It doesn’t have to be that way. An e-mail client isn’t a Web browser. Nor is an IM client. But we use Web browsers a lot. If there was ever a Swiss Army knife of applications, it went from being an office suite to a Web browser long ago.

Under it all, Google Chrome is meant to be a pipeline for data, a framework for applications, and most importantly, a way to reimagine the browser with all-new, non-legacy code.

So why does it look so much like … a Web browser?

Can’t answer that one. But if the under-the-hood innovation promised by Google — features to quash malware and phishing, an emphasis on multiple threads, closer integration with other Web-fed applications like Google Docs and Gears … if all this proves compelling in some way, and if pure speed comes along with it, Google can win this war.

And if rumors are true, part of that war might involve the purchase of Mozilla.

Others, including Matt Asay of Cnet (and Alfresco), think that Mozilla’s superior leverage in the community — of users and open-source developers vs. Google’s paltry showing in this area means that Mozilla won’t fold so easily.

And Mozilla has plenty of ideas of its own about where users interaction with the Internet and the desktop are going.

Notice how I didn’t mention Microsoft? I don’t see MS out-innovating anyone. It follows, and does so brilliantly and profitably, but it does not lead when it comes to technological innovation.

But as great as Mozilla’s community might be, a concerted effort to develop the Chrome browser and any other technology that comes out of it really cannot be matched.

And if in some way Chrome manages to bring in more green for Google, I can see many, many resources, indeed, being heaped upon this latest venture.

Revised: I’m using the new Google Chrome browser

The Internet — and the rest of the press, newspapers included — has been buzzing loudly with the initially leaked and now confirmed news of Google’s new Web browser.

After the leak, Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal reported on the new Google Chrome application — currently available for Windows only but with planned versions for the Mac and Linux to follow.

Chrome doesn’t represent the first time Google has taken on the technology world’s big dog, which in case you didn’t guess is Microsoft.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal’s main story on Chrome, which includes a bit of helpful analysis about Google and Chrome’s place in the computing universe.

This all got out of the proverbial bag when a HUGE comic book leaked on the Web (yes, a comic book; that’s how the kids do things these days, I guess). If you want to know a lot about Google Chrome, I suggest you click the link and read this long — 38 pages in all — comic book. Or is it a graphic novel?

Before I get into all of that, let me recount my morning:

I got in, and while Google Chrome was supposed to be available for download, there was no indication of that anywhere on Google. Search revealed that there was a Google Chrome page, but clicking on the link led back to the main Google page.

Then came the announcement of a noon PDT news conference at the Googleplex in Northern California, at which time Google Chrome would again be available for download.

I went to the Google Chrome site about 12:30 p.m. PDT and found an actual link to download the browser.

Have you ever tried to download a “marquee” application on its first day of availability? The most recent was Firefox 3, and Mozilla’s effort to set a bogus Guinness World Record, combined with all-around clamor for the new browser, made it impossible to download at first.

The same thing happens with the popular Ubuntu GNU/Linux operating system. Whenever there’s a new version of it, good luck on getting it any time during the first week; the servers get hammered.

But with Google Chrome, I clicked the link and had a small installer app in literally 5 seconds. I clicked on that installer icon and had the full Google Chrome browser in about a minute. I do have a fast connection here at the Daily News, but this was still quicker than I’d ever expect.

So if you want to download Google Chrome, I don’t suspect you’ll have any trouble at all.

And if the title of this post has already left your mind, let me repeat: I’m using Google Chrome right now.

When you run Google Chrome, opening up a new tab tells you that you are running Google Chrome Beta, meaning this isn’t considered a “final” release. But Google is notorious for tagging its products as “beta” for extended periods of time. Google Docs is still in beta, and it’s been out for over a year. Google Groups finally lost its beta tag, but did carry the beta designation for an awfully long time.

But even though Google Chrome is technically a beta app, it looks polished, albeit very basic, in its first public release. Clicking on the little “wrench” icon near the upper right portion of the Google Chrome window, then clicking on About Google Chrome, yields the following version information:

Google Chrome 0.2.149.27

As is customary during a pre-release, Chrome hasn’t yet hit the 1.0 in its version number. That will happen when it leaves beta.

But does any of that matter? So far I’ve had quite a bit of luck with Google Chrome when it comes to rendering Web pages. It works flawlessly with Movable Type. According to the Google comic book (yeah, I’m using a comic book to write this … lovely, eh?), one of the things that the Google engineers are pushing in Chrome is a faster Javascript rendering engine. And things do, indeed, seem to be appearing faster.

Where does Google Chrome come from?

It is based on the open-source WebKit layout engine, which is what Apple based its Safari browser on. What else uses WebKit? Apple’s iPhone and Google’s open-source Android mobile-phone operating system do.

And the Epiphany Web browser, which is based on Mozilla’s Gecko layout engine, has been planning to move to WebKit for some time. The super-fast Konqueror browser which is an integral part of the KDE desktop environment that’s very popular with Linux users, has also adopted WebKit. Not so ironically, WebKit itself is based on the KHTML rendering engine that used to power Konqueror.

One thing that comes out of all this: WebKit and Gecko, Firefox and Konqueror, and now Google Chrome are all open-source projects. That means anybody can see how they’re made and add to them if they wish. They can even fork them and create their own project, just so long as proper credit is given and their code is made as freely available as that upon which it’s based.

Security: Google claims that the Chrome browser is very secure and by the nature of the way it’s put together doesn’t allow malicious entities on the Internet the same access to your PC as “traditional” applications.

One way Google does this is in the way Chrome is installed.

“Normal” applications, including the Firefox and Internet Explorer Web browsers, are installed in the C:\Program Files directory, where all of your applications tend to live. Chrome, however, is installed here: C:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\

If I’m understanding this correctly (and it’s entirely possible that I do not), being installed under “Documents and Settings” instead of “Program Files” is one way of keeping Chrome, or anything interfacing with it, in its own area, if you will. Chrome is intent on keeping outside entities away from your PC’s most critical files.

Cool Google Chrome features for geeks:

Right-click anywhere on the screen, then left-click on “inspect element,” to see the HTML and CSS for that portion of the page.

Right-click above the tabs in the darker-blue area Google Chrome application window and then left-click on Task Manager to see all the processes running Google Chrome. Click on any of the items in the list and, if you wish, click on “End Process” to do just that. Click on the “Stats for Nerds” linke (yes, that’s what it’s called) for more-detailed information to open up in a new window.

To get the Task Manager more quickly, type shift-esc.

Under the very basic menu icon (the thing that looks like a small piece of paper and is located just to the left of the little “wrench” menu icon), you can “Create application shortcuts.” That allows you to make any Web page a clickable icon on either the desktop, Start menu or Quick Launch bar. Hint: It’s not meant for static Web pages but for Web-based applications like Google Docs, which I’m suspecting will be closely tied to Google Chrome as development continues.

Do we need another Web browser? With Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and others I’m forgetting about for Windows; Firefox, Safari, Opera, Camino and more for Mac OS; Firefox, Opera, Epiphany, Konqueror, Dillo and many more for Linux/Unix?

I’m going to answer yes. The Web browser is the most-used application on the great majority of PCs — and by a very, very long shot at that.

Innovation in the browser is key to allowing users to have the best possible Web experience by allowing developers to expand the notion of what it means to interact with the Internet. The World Wide Web didn’t begin as a dynamic entity. Instead it offered a different way to view static Internet content. That notion has changed dramatically, and now the Internet is awash in things that look like applications, act like applications and work like applications. Via the browser, we write, edit images, do our banking and shopping, communicate in real time, watch and interact with all kinds of media. The pipe sends us more and more things every day.

A new Web browser is just one way to change the game as far as the way we use the Internet. I’m not the only one predicting that Web browsers, as stand-alone entities, will become less important in the years ahead. There will be all kinds of ways to interact with the network, both PC-application based and browser-based. And these entities will be created in many different ways.

Google wants the browser to serve as a better conduit for its many products, from search ads to Google Docs. Controlling its own Web browser frees Google from any dependence on Microsoft or even Mozilla, which is almost wholly funded by Google search revenue via the Firefox browser. Curiously (or perhaps not), Google just signed a new agreement to keep the search-ad money flowing to Mozilla. And in the Chrome comic book, Mozilla is thanked by Google for its innovation in the browser space.

But will a new browser with a big backer (and is anybody bigger than Google at this point?) help or hurt IE and Firefox?

To the extent that Google Chrome drives innovation at Microsoft and Mozilla — and nothing spurs Microsoft on like somebody trying to eat its lunch, Chrome is a win for the user. More competition always means better apps.

For the other browser-makers, Chrome will grab market share. No doubt there. The app is quite good out of the box, and from all appearances, it can only get better.

It’s early at this point. But you can bet that every single employee at Microsoft, every coder on the Mozilla project, and every blathering tech journalist (and I do use that term loosely, even referring to myself) is trying Google Chrome right now.

And while Google Chrome has a very basic, almost stripped-down look, that’s pure Google. Expect Chrome to change quite a bit over the next six months, with features being added, functionality refined and bugs eliminated.

For me, the pudding will be much closer to proofing when Google Chrome is available for Mac OS and Linux. How long will that take? Not long, I figure. Most people use Windows, by far. But hardcore geeks gravitate toward the Mac and open-source operating systems like Linux. Until they get Chrome for their favored systems, they’ll be a grumbly bunch.

The bigger picture

Google has a lot of tentacles out there, and while a rumored Google operating system, which could eliminate the need for Microsoft Windows on a desktop PC, has not come to pass, a Google-branded Web browser to go along with Office-killer Google Docs (and the Google Gears component for offline use) means that Microsoft in particular is more vulnerable now than ever. And buying Yahoo won’t help one little bit.

Revised: I’m using the new Google Chrome browser

The Internet — and the rest of the press, newspapers included — has been buzzing loudly with the initially leaked and now confirmed news of Google’s new Web browser.

After the leak, Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal reported on the new Google Chrome application — currently available for Windows only but with planned versions for the Mac and Linux to follow.

Chrome doesn’t represent the first time Google has taken on the technology world’s big dog, which in case you didn’t guess is Microsoft.

Here’s the Wall Street Journal’s main story on Chrome, which includes a bit of helpful analysis about Google and Chrome’s place in the computing universe.

This all got out of the proverbial bag when a HUGE comic book leaked on the Web (yes, a comic book; that’s how the kids do things these days, I guess). If you want to know a lot about Google Chrome, I suggest you click the link and read this long — 38 pages in all — comic book. Or is it a graphic novel?

Before I get into all of that, let me recount my morning:

I got in, and while Google Chrome was supposed to be available for download, there was no indication of that anywhere on Google. Search revealed that there was a Google Chrome page, but clicking on the link led back to the main Google page.

Then came the announcement of a noon PDT news conference at the Googleplex in Northern California, at which time Google Chrome would again be available for download.

I went to the Google Chrome site about 12:30 p.m. PDT and found an actual link to download the browser.

Have you ever tried to download a “marquee” application on its first day of availability? The most recent was Firefox 3, and Mozilla’s effort to set a bogus Guinness World Record, combined with all-around clamor for the new browser, made it impossible to download at first.

The same thing happens with the popular Ubuntu GNU/Linux operating system. Whenever there’s a new version of it, good luck on getting it any time during the first week; the servers get hammered.

But with Google Chrome, I clicked the link and had a small installer app in literally 5 seconds. I clicked on that installer icon and had the full Google Chrome browser in about a minute. I do have a fast connection here at the Daily News, but this was still quicker than I’d ever expect.

So if you want to download Google Chrome, I don’t suspect you’ll have any trouble at all.

And if the title of this post has already left your mind, let me repeat: I’m using Google Chrome right now.

When you run Google Chrome, opening up a new tab tells you that you are running Google Chrome Beta, meaning this isn’t considered a “final” release. But Google is notorious for tagging its products as “beta” for extended periods of time. Google Docs is still in beta, and it’s been out for over a year. Google Groups finally lost its beta tag, but did carry the beta designation for an awfully long time.

But even though Google Chrome is technically a beta app, it looks polished, albeit very basic, in its first public release. Clicking on the little “wrench” icon near the upper right portion of the Google Chrome window, then clicking on About Google Chrome, yields the following version information:

Google Chrome 0.2.149.27

As is customary during a pre-release, Chrome hasn’t yet hit the 1.0 in its version number. That will happen when it leaves beta.

But does any of that matter? So far I’ve had quite a bit of luck with Google Chrome when it comes to rendering Web pages. It works flawlessly with Movable Type. According to the Google comic book (yeah, I’m using a comic book to write this … lovely, eh?), one of the things that the Google engineers are pushing in Chrome is a faster Javascript rendering engine. And things do, indeed, seem to be appearing faster.

Where does Google Chrome come from?

It is based on the open-source WebKit layout engine, which is what Apple based its Safari browser on. What else uses WebKit? Apple’s iPhone and Google’s open-source Android mobile-phone operating system do.

And the Epiphany Web browser, which is based on Mozilla’s Gecko layout engine, has been planning to move to WebKit for some time. The super-fast Konqueror browser which is an integral part of the KDE desktop environment that’s very popular with Linux users, has also adopted WebKit. Not so ironically, WebKit itself is based on the KHTML rendering engine that used to power Konqueror.

One thing that comes out of all this: WebKit and Gecko, Firefox and Konqueror, and now Google Chrome are all open-source projects. That means anybody can see how they’re made and add to them if they wish. They can even fork them and create their own project, just so long as proper credit is given and their code is made as freely available as that upon which it’s based.

Security: Google claims that the Chrome browser is very secure and by the nature of the way it’s put together doesn’t allow malicious entities on the Internet the same access to your PC as “traditional” applications.

One way Google does this is in the way Chrome is installed.

“Normal” applications, including the Firefox and Internet Explorer Web browsers, are installed in the C:\Program Files directory, where all of your applications tend to live. Chrome, however, is installed here: C:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\

If I’m understanding this correctly (and it’s entirely possible that I do not), being installed under “Documents and Settings” instead of “Program Files” is one way of keeping Chrome, or anything interfacing with it, in its own area, if you will. Chrome is intent on keeping outside entities away from your PC’s most critical files.

Cool Google Chrome features for geeks:

Right-click anywhere on the screen, then left-click on “inspect element,” to see the HTML and CSS for that portion of the page.

Right-click above the tabs in the darker-blue area Google Chrome application window and then left-click on Task Manager to see all the processes running Google Chrome. Click on any of the items in the list and, if you wish, click on “End Process” to do just that. Click on the “Stats for Nerds” linke (yes, that’s what it’s called) for more-detailed information to open up in a new window.

To get the Task Manager more quickly, type shift-esc.

Under the very basic menu icon (the thing that looks like a small piece of paper and is located just to the left of the little “wrench” menu icon), you can “Create application shortcuts.” That allows you to make any Web page a clickable icon on either the desktop, Start menu or Quick Launch bar. Hint: It’s not meant for static Web pages but for Web-based applications like Google Docs, which I’m suspecting will be closely tied to Google Chrome as development continues.

Do we need another Web browser? With Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and others I’m forgetting about for Windows; Firefox, Safari, Opera, Camino and more for Mac OS; Firefox, Opera, Epiphany, Konqueror, Dillo and many more for Linux/Unix?

I’m going to answer yes. The Web browser is the most-used application on the great majority of PCs — and by a very, very long shot at that.

Innovation in the browser is key to allowing users to have the best possible Web experience by allowing developers to expand the notion of what it means to interact with the Internet. The World Wide Web didn’t begin as a dynamic entity. Instead it offered a different way to view static Internet content. That notion has changed dramatically, and now the Internet is awash in things that look like applications, act like applications and work like applications. Via the browser, we write, edit images, do our banking and shopping, communicate in real time, watch and interact with all kinds of media. The pipe sends us more and more things every day.

A new Web browser is just one way to change the game as far as the way we use the Internet. I’m not the only one predicting that Web browsers, as stand-alone entities, will become less important in the years ahead. There will be all kinds of ways to interact with the network, both PC-application based and browser-based. And these entities will be created in many different ways.

Google wants the browser to serve as a better conduit for its many products, from search ads to Google Docs. Controlling its own Web browser frees Google from any dependence on Microsoft or even Mozilla, which is almost wholly funded by Google search revenue via the Firefox browser. Curiously (or perhaps not), Google just signed a new agreement to keep the search-ad money flowing to Mozilla. And in the Chrome comic book, Mozilla is thanked by Google for its innovation in the browser space.

But will a new browser with a big backer (and is anybody bigger than Google at this point?) help or hurt IE and Firefox?

To the extent that Google Chrome drives innovation at Microsoft and Mozilla — and nothing spurs Microsoft on like somebody trying to eat its lunch, Chrome is a win for the user. More competition always means better apps.

For the other browser-makers, Chrome will grab market share. No doubt there. The app is quite good out of the box, and from all appearances, it can only get better.

It’s early at this point. But you can bet that every single employee at Microsoft, every coder on the Mozilla project, and every blathering tech journalist (and I do use that term loosely, even referring to myself) is trying Google Chrome right now.

And while Google Chrome has a very basic, almost stripped-down look, that’s pure Google. Expect Chrome to change quite a bit over the next six months, with features being added, functionality refined and bugs eliminated.

For me, the pudding will be much closer to proofing when Google Chrome is available for Mac OS and Linux. How long will that take? Not long, I figure. Most people use Windows, by far. But hardcore geeks gravitate toward the Mac and open-source operating systems like Linux. Until they get Chrome for their favored systems, they’ll be a grumbly bunch.

The bigger picture

Google has a lot of tentacles out there, and while a rumored Google operating system, which could eliminate the need for Microsoft Windows on a desktop PC, has not come to pass, a Google-branded Web browser to go along with Office-killer Google Docs (and the Google Gears component for offline use) means that Microsoft in particular is more vulnerable now than ever. And buying Yahoo won’t help one little bit.