Google has launched its open source Web Browser dubbed Chrome yesterday. In a nutshell, Chrome uses a separate process space (a process space has its own memory space) for each tab, rather than, sharing the process space with other tabs. This runtime architecture makes it stable, faster and also isolates a page’s bugs from affecting another tab, provided the bug page tab is closed. Chrome also offers some great security features. The combination of stability, security and speed to render pages is the key to realize the vision of “building web applications that are as powerful as desktop applications”. This vision is that of the Gears team and the vehicle to realize it is Chrome. How?

Chrome comes bundled with Gears, another open source offering from Google. Gears offers some compelling features such as:

1. Desktop Shortcuts

2. File Systems (for uploading multiple files easily)

3. Desktop Notifications

4. Blob (a binary format for exchanging large files)

5. Geolocation

The above features when fully supported by default in a browser can be leveraged by web applications. This obviously bridges the gap between desktop applications and web application to certain extent, while taking Web 2.0 to the next level of maturity.

In the enterprise world, adoption of the Chrome browser may be sooner than most think. It is interesting to note that such skepticism also prevailed on GWT adoption in the enterprise market. However, the feature set of GWT and the ease of programming in Java and executing the code as a Javascript at run time resulted in improvements in developer productivity, which lead to the faster adoption. Some fine products developed using GWT are: Business Process Management Software, GoGrid’s control panel (requires registration). Some examples of Gears usage are: MySpace Mail Search, Zoho Offline feature, Buxfer, an online financial utility services firm, stores sensitive financial information locally in Gears provided database to synchronize it later.

Lastly the distribution of Chrome on Android platform as a mobile browser would unify the web experience for users while keeping things simple. This could be a compelling reason for many users to adopt Chrome.