Google's Chrome Browser is Now 4 Years Old

By Wolfgang Gruener
published

Google's Chrome browser is celebrating its fourth birthday this week.

Google released the first beta version of Chrome on September 2, 2008. The first final release followed on December 11, 2008. Since its launch, Chrome has captured the lead in the market share race and is currently slightly ahead of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, with 33.59 percent versus 32.85 percent share.

The browser has been widely credited with increasing the focus on browser speed and security, and forcing Microsoft and Mozilla to substantially accelerate their JavaScript engines. According to JavaScript benchmarks such as Google's Octane, SunSpider or Mozilla's Kraken, chrome is still ahead in this discipline. Google has also influenced its rivals to adopt a silent update mechanism and a reduced user interface that allows more content to be shown in the browser window. Mozilla has also changed its software release schedule to 6 week time frames to match Google's model.

To review Chrome's milestones, Google posted the Chrome Time Machine, which allows the user to click through all major announcements. My personal favorite is the speed tests video, including a comparison of Chrome page load times against a potato gun. The video was launched when Chrome 5 was current (today were are using Chrome 21 as final version and Chrome 23 as developer version).

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Wolfgang Gruener
25 Comments Comment from the forums
  • killabanks
    as much as i like chrome i am stuck using firefox until they get my mulitouch pad to work it does in ff or ie
    Reply
  • DroKing
    and..... wait for it..... waittttttt.... It still suck.
    Reply
  • classzero
    must be using a SSD because I do not get these speeds with 60Mb service.
    Reply
  • ricardois
    too young, a lot to learn yet.
    Reply
  • shin0bi272
    I just cant abide by that download system. I like a separate window that pops up and then goes away when its done not some tab I have to open manually.
    Reply
  • JasonAkkerman
    Four years old and I still can't tell it where to put its cache files without jumping through hoops.
    Reply
  • LemonMeringueTy
    Been using it since Day 1 and haven't looked back :)
    Reply
  • boiler1990
    Been using it all four of those years too! Overall it's probably the best browser for average people - it's simple and fast. Firefox is obviously the choice for power users since you get far more customizability (from hardware and software perspectives) than Chrome.
    Reply
  • overclockingrocks
    switched from FF to chrome permanently about 3 years ago once extensions started getting ported and haven't looked back
    Reply
  • myromance123
    Not to be rude to anyone, however Firefox is simply the strongest in handling boatloads of tabs. I use panorama to separate different tab groups for when I am doing different things. When learning, I make use of many different sites for the tidbits of info they hold.

    Chrome, in my personal experience up to now, is unable to stably handle anything more than 20 tabs. There are also times when it decides to have a crashing fit (with only about 2 or 3 tabs open). The only really horrible time I had was with Firefox 4.0. That was a disaster with memory handling. Firefox has pretty much settled down now and is still my preffered browser.

    Plus DownThemAll is the love of my life for downloading regardless of OS.
    Reply