谷歌推出Chrome瀏覽器

谷歌公司昨天推出一種新的瀏覽器，名叫“Chrome”。該公司聲稱此舉是為了“給用戶帶來更多好處，并推動網絡創新”，不過基本上沒有人懷疑谷歌的目的是要挑戰微軟公司的IE瀏覽器在桌上型電腦上的全球統治地位。

IE在瀏覽器市場的占有率是70%多，Firefox和蘋果公司的Safari瀏覽器各自占有20%和6%的市場份額，得以躋身前三強，而目前的瀏覽器市場基本上也就是這樣一個三馬奔騰的局面。目前，大部分用戶使用微軟瀏覽器，同時使用谷歌搜索引擎。谷歌顯然希望改變這種狀態，一統天下。

目前Chrome瀏覽器只和“視窗”操作系統兼容，并且還只是一個測試版，這意味著該軟件可能會存在一些突出的毛病。Chrome的產品經理Sundar Pichai和首席工程師Linus Upson在宣布該產品推出的博客文章里解釋說他們是遵照該公司的“早早推出，反復推出”哲學，換言之，發現現存問題的最佳辦法是將產品對用戶充分開放。Pichai和Upson還透露與Mac和Linux系統兼容的Chrome版本還在開發中，但是他們沒有給出它們的推出日期。

那么，Chrome瀏覽器有什么新穎之處呢？它將地址欄和搜索框合二為一，谷歌聲稱這有利于簡化網絡瀏覽。該瀏覽器的建造基于因為Firefox而被人們熟知的標簽技術，但是谷歌又說它更安全、功能更強大，因為在Chrome的“瀏覽器結構”里每個標簽都是獨立的，不會出現一個網頁死了導致整個瀏覽器崩潰的情況。

該軟件的工程原理和其平滑外表下面的結構體系被獨出心裁地用一組漫畫呈現出來。漫畫看起來不錯，但是還是顯得冗長晦澀。不過技術迷們肯定還是會很喜歡它。Chrome的設計者充分利用了Safari和Firefox開發者提供的開源軟件；不過假如爆發一輪瀏覽器大戰，那可就有點海水沖了龍王廟了。谷歌上禮拜才跟非贏利性的Mozilla基金會（Firefox的主要開發者）把雙方合作協議續簽到了2011年。

現在最讓分析家們摸不著頭腦的是谷歌為什么作出這個舉動以及它將如何從Chrome上掙錢。不管怎么說，瀏覽器只不過是用來瀏覽網上內容的一個窗口；對于用戶來說，它可以說是透明的——或者說是無形的。一些行家猜測，谷歌這么做是一個大步驟中的小步驟；這個大步驟就是降低其對通過它的搜索引擎產生的廣告利潤的依賴。但是新的利潤流到底來自哪里目前還是個未知數。另外它這么做也是以攻為守——專門針對即將問世的一版IE瀏覽器，該瀏覽器可以讓用戶更方便地屏蔽谷歌等發送的廣告。

微軟現在也不象要善罷甘休的樣子。很多Chrome用戶用它做的頭一件事之一就是訪問他們的Hotmail帳號。登陸的時候，頁面上會出現如下提示：“我們建議您更新您的瀏覽器，從而得到使用Hotmail的最大好處。更新大概需要幾分鐘。如果想要開始，請選擇如下瀏覽器：IE、Firefox或Safari。”

Google launches Chrome web browser

Google yesterday launched a new web browser called Chrome, claiming that it made its move in order to "add value for users and, at the same time, drive innovation on the web", but few doubted that the company was aiming to challenge the dominant position of Microsoft's Internet Explorer on desktops around the world.

Internet Explorer has over 70 percent of the browser market, Mozilla Firefox has around 20 percent and Apple's Safari is the also ran of the big three with 6 percent. The rest of the competition is nowhere. Google clearly hopes that most users web experience, that at the moment mixes Microsoft's Explorer and Google's search engine, will become a more purely Google affair.

Chrome is so far only available for Windows and is a beta version, which means there still may be significant problems with the software. In a blog post announcing the release, product manager Sundar Pichai and chief engineer Linus Upson explained that they were following the company philosophy of "release early and iterate"; in effect saying the best way to detect the remaining problems was to throw it open to ordinary users. Work is in progress on Mac and Linux versions according to Pichai and Upson although they gave no release dates.

So what's new in Chrome? There is an integrated address and search box which the company claims will simplify surfing. The browser is built around the tab technology made familiar by Firefox, but with additional security and robustness according to Google, since in the Chrome "browser architecture", each tab is independent and a crash on one page will not bring the whole browser down.

The software engineering, the machinery behind the smooth surface of Chrome, has been innovatively presented in a cartoon, which, despite the cool pictures, will find too long and heavy-going, but will no doubt appeal to the tech freaks and geeks. The engineers behind Chrome have helped themselves liberally to open source software made available by the developers of Safari and Firefox, which may turn out to be something of a paradox if the browser wars take off, the more so since just last week Google extended a cooperation agreement with non-profit Mozilla to 2011.

The big questions puzzling industry analysts today are, why Google made this move, and how will it make money out of Chrome. A browser is after all simply a window to view content on the web and is pretty well transparent, that is to say invisible, to users. Some pundits speculated it was part of a broader effort by Google to reduce its dependence on advertising revenue generated by its search engine, but where the new revenue streams will come from exactly so far remains obscure. Another motive may be purely defensive, a response to a planned Internet Explorer release that will make it easier for users to block advertisements routed by, for example, Google.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is unlikely to take things lying down. One of the first things many users will do is to try to load up their Hotmail account using Chrome. When we tried Hotmail, it displayed the following message: "We recommend that you upgrade your web browser so you can get the most out of Windows Live Hotmail. Upgrading should only take a few minutes. To get started, choose one of the browsers below: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, or Apple Safari."

(China.org.cn by John Sexton 漢譯：弱猿 September 4, 2008)