September 2, 2008

Google Chrome beta released

Google launched ChromeGoogle's web browser — built on Chromium and the most widely used browser worldwide. in beta on September 2, 2008 — a minimalist browser built on WebKitApple's open-source browser engine — powers Safari and historically influenced Chrome's fork. with a multi-process architecture and the new V8Google's open-source JavaScript engine — powers Chrome, Node.js, and many embedded runtimes. JavaScript engine.

What it was for

Google ChromeChromeGoogle's web browser — built on Chromium and the most widely used browser worldwide. treated each tab as a separate process for stability, shipped a blazing-fast JS VM (V8Google's open-source JavaScript engine — powers Chrome, Node.js, and many embedded runtimes.), and popularized the omnibox address bar. It quickly overtook FirefoxMozilla's open-source browser — championed web standards and challenged Internet Explorer's dominance. and IEInternet Explorer — Microsoft's browser that dominated the web in the 1990s and 2000s., drove the shift to evergreen auto-updates, and later forked WebKitApple's open-source browser engine — powers Safari and historically influenced Chrome's fork. into BlinkGoogle's rendering engine forked from WebKit — powers Chrome and many Chromium-based browsers. — defining how modern browsers are built.

Companies

  • Google

Why it's here

ChromeGoogle's web browser — built on Chromium and the most widely used browser worldwide. reset performance expectations and became the world's most-used browser.

Why it mattered

V8Google's open-source JavaScript engine — powers Chrome, Node.js, and many embedded runtimes., multi-process tabs, and rapid releases became the template every competitor followed.

What it solved

Web apps like Gmail and Maps were pushing browsers to their limits; Google needed a platform built for applications, not just documents.

Media

  • Google Chrome
    ImageGoogle Chrome

    Google, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Related