Google Set to Introduce its Own Web Browser
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By Eric Auchard
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc is set to introduce on Tuesday a new Web browser designed to more quickly handle video-rich applications, posing a challenge to browsers designed originally to handle text and graphics.
Google officials confirmed news of long-rumored plans to offer its own Web browsing software, entitled Google Chrome, in a company blog post after it mistakenly mailed details of the project to a Google-watching blog, called Blogoscoped.com.
The company statement calls the move "a fresh take on the browser" and said it will be introducing a public trial of the Web browser for Microsoft Corp Windows users on Tuesday. Details can be found at tinyurl.com/gchrome/.
The Internet search leader is also working on versions for Apple Macintosh users and for Linux devices, Google said.
The launch of Chrome coincides with the recent introduction by arch-rival Microsoft of its Internet Explorer 8 last month. Internet Explorer has roughly three-quarters of the browser market, followed by Mozilla's Firefox and Apple's Safari.
Google said its engineers had borrowed from a variety of other open-source projects, including Apple Inc's WebKit and the Mozilla Firefox open-source browser. As a result, Google plans to make all of Chrome software code open to other developers to enhance and expand, the company said.
"We realized that the Web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser," Google Vice President of Product Management Sindar Pichai and Engineering Director Linus Upson said in a jointly authored blog post.
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