Google’s Chrome is innovative and efficient

From Mike’s NBC-TV report…Google’s new Chrome browser is an impressive salvo in its simmering skirmish with Microsoft that signals more ambitious plans to fully compete with not just Microsoft’s Internet Browser but it’s full Office suite of applications, too.

Chrome’s biggest strength in my book is the innovative way it uses detachable, movable tabs in place of the traditional toolbar at the top of the screen to manage web pages, offer very quick back and forth viewing of different sites and offer a visual sampling of your most recent browsing.

These tabs behave as browsers-within-a-browser and automatically group related tabs together. Very nifty.

Then there’s what Google calls the “Omnibar,” a replacement for the traditional search box that uses what is normally the address box where we type in the URL. Start typing and suggestions are offered based on your personal search history, Google’s auto-completion feature and the standard Google search engine.

Something else that is pretty cool is an Applications Shortcut feature that allows you to, in effect, “bookmark” different applications that appear as icons on the let of the Chrome browser screen. Click to open them, right from Chrome, and then run them in a Chrome window.

This is the feature that perhaps offers the most direct threat to Microsoft and Office. Google already has a whole bunch of Web-based programs like a word processor, spreadsheet, photo editing, calendar and e-mail manager. They plan to beef them up even more.

“We think of the browser as the window to the web – it’s a tool for users to interact with the web sites and applications they care about, and it’s important that we don’t get in the way of that experience,” said Sundar Pichai, Vice President of Product Management, Google Inc.

Google claims Chrome is faster than IE and Firefox. My tests were not so clearcut. While the net effect of being able to switth between the tabs does make things more efficient, Microsoft’s latest IE8 browser seemed faster in my early experiments.

IE8, like Chrome, is a beta, or test release. And it is pretty darn slick, probably the best version of IE I have ever used. It also has tabs that organize pages by groups. Unlike Chrome, it differentiates them by colors, making it easier to recognize at a single glance. And it’s address bar also offers lots of suggestions, working somewhat similar to to Chrome’s Omnibar.

Chrome works only with Windows machines, though a mac version is said to be in the works.

Chrome is radically different that any other browser you’ve ever used. Maybe that’s why, in my brief tests, I found it awkward. Intrigung, yes. But because it looks and works in ways I’m not used to when browsing, I find myself drawn to IE and Firefox.

I plan to keep using Chrome as much as I can, to see if, with familiarity, I like it more.

But, in general, I think it has a lot of promise. And anything that increases cometition online is, I believe, good for consumers.

With a 75% market share, IE is going to be a tough target for Google. For that matter, so is Firefox, with perhaps a 20% market share.

But good for Google in trying and innovating. I’m betting that Chrome is going to be improved quickly.

You can download it yourself and view lots of tutorials at www.google.com/chrome.

But while you’re doing it, be sure to get the latest version of IE at www.microsoft.com.