Sunday, December 11, 2016
Google Chrome Free Download
Google Chrome Free Download
Google Chrome
It is a freeware web browser developed by Google. It used the WebKit layout engine until version 27 and, with the exception of its iOS releases, from version 28 and beyond uses the WebKit fork Blink. It was first released as a beta versionfor Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and as a stable public release on December 11, 2008.
As of January 2015, StatCounter estimates that Google Chrome has a 51% worldwide usage share of web browsers as a desktop browser. It is also the most popular browser on all the other platforms it supports, mobile, tablets (except for the iPad where the Safari browser is preinstalled, and because of that popularity Safari is most popular on all tablets combined) or any combinations of platforms, such as mobile plus tablets.
Google releases the majority of Chromes source code as an open-source project Chromium. A notable component that is not open source is the built-in Adobe Flash Player.
History
Google CEO Eric Schmidt opposed the development of an independent web browser for six years. He stated that "at the time, Google was a small company," and he did not want to go through "bruising browser wars." After co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page hired several Mozilla Firefox developers and built a demonstration of Chrome, Schmidt admitted that "It was so good that it essentially forced me to change my mind.
Announcement
The release announcement was originally scheduled for September 3, 2008, and a comic by Scott McCloud was to be sent to journalists and bloggers explaining the features within the new browser. Copies intended for Europe were shipped early and German blogger Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscopedmade a scanned copy of the 38-page comic available on his website after receiving it on September 1, 2008. Google subsequently made the comic available on Google Books and mentioned it on their official blog along with an explanation for the early release.
Public release
An early version of Chromium for Linux, explaining the difference between Chrome and Chromium
The browser was first publicly released for Microsoft Windows (XP and later versions) on September 2, 2008 in 43 languages, officially a beta version.
On the same day, a CNET news item drew attention to a passage in the Terms of Service statement for the initial beta release, which seemed to grant to Google a license to all content transferred via the Chrome browser. This passage was inherited from the general Google terms of service. Google responded to this criticism immediately by stating that the language used was borrowed from other products, and removed this passage from the Terms of Service.
Chrome quickly gained about 1% usage share. After the initial surge, usage share dropped until it hit a low of 0.69% in October 2008. It then started rising again and by December 2008, Chrome again passed the 1% threshold.
In early January 2009, CNET reported that Google planned to release versions of Chrome for OS X and Linux in the first half of the year. The first official Chrome OS X and Linux developer previews were announced on June 4, 2009 with a blog postsaying they were missing many features and were intended for early feedback rather than general use.
In December 2009, Google released beta versions of Chrome for OS X and Linux. Google Chrome 5.0, announced on May 25, 2010, was the first stable release to support all three platforms.
Chrome was one of the twelve browsers offered to European Economic Area users of Microsoft Windows in 2010.
Development
Chrome was assembled from 25 different code libraries from Google and third parties such as Mozillas Netscape Portable Runtime, Network Security Services, NPAPI, Skia Graphics Engine, SQLite, and a number of other open-source projects.[38] The V8 JavaScript virtual machine was considered a sufficiently important project to be split off (as wasAdobe/Mozillas Tamarin) and handled by a separate team in Denmark coordinated by Lars Bak at Aarhus. According to Google, existing implementations were designed "for small programs, where the performance and interactivity of the system werent that important", but web applications such as Gmail "are using the web browser to the fullest when it comes to DOM manipulations and JavaScript", and therefore would significantly benefit from a JavaScript engine that could work faster.
Chrome uses the Blink rendering engine to display web pages. Based on WebKit, Blink only uses WebKits "WebCore" components while substituting all other components, such as its own multi-process architecture in place of WebKits native implementation.
Chrome is internally tested with unit testing, "automated user interface testing of scripted user actions", fuzz testing, as well as WebKits layout tests (99% of which Chrome is claimed to have passed), and against commonly accessed websites inside the Google index within 20–30 minutes.
Google created Gears for Chrome, which added features for web developers typically relating to the building of web applications, including offline support. Google phased out Gears as the same functionality became available in the HTML5 standards.
On January 11, 2011, the Chrome product manager, Mike Jazayeri, announced that Chrome would remove H.264 video codec support for its HTML5 player, citing the desire to bring Google Chrome more in line with the currently available open codecs available in the Chromium project, which Chrome is based on.[41] Despite this, on November 6, 2012, Google released a version of Chrome on Windows which added hardware-accelerated H.264 video decoding. In October 2013, Cisco announced that it was open-sourcing its H.264 codecs and will cover all fees required.
On February 7, 2012, Google launched Google Chrome Beta for Android 4.0 devices. On many new devices with Android 4.1 and later preinstalled, Chrome is the default browser.
On April 3, 2013, Google announced that it would fork the WebCore component of WebKit to form its own layout engine known as Blink. The aim of Blink will be to give Chromes developers more freedom in implementing its own changes to the engine, and to allow its codebase to be trimmed of code that is unnecessary or unimplemented by Chrome.
Release history
Features
Google Chrome features a minimalistic user interface, with its user-interface principles later being implemented into other browsers. For example, the merging of the address barand search bar into the omnibox. Chrome also has a reputation for strong browser performance.
Bookmarks and settings synchronisation
Chrome allows users to synchronize their bookmarks, history, and settings across all devices with the browser installed by sending and receiving data through a chosen Google Account, which in turn updates all signed-in instances of Chrome. This can be authenticated either through Google credentials, or a sync passphrase.
Web standards support
The results of the Acid3 test on Google Chrome 4.0
The first release of Google Chrome passed both the Acid1 and Acid2 tests. Beginning with version 4.0, Chrome has passed all aspects of the Acid3 test.
As of May 2011, Chrome has very good support for JavaScript/ECMAScript according to Ecma Internationals ECMAScript standards conformance Test 262 (version ES5.1 of 2012-05-18). This test reports as the final score the number of tests a browser failed; hence lower scores are better. In this test, Chrome version 37 scored 10 failed/11578 passed. For comparison, Firefox 19 scored 193 failed/11752 passed and Internet Explorer 9 has a score of 600+ failed, while Internet Explorer 10 has a score of 7 failed.
In 2011 on the official CSS 2.1 test suite by standardization organization W3C, WebKit, the Chrome rendering engine, passes 89.75% (89.38% out of 99.59% covered) CSS 2.1 tests.
On the HTML5 web standards test, Chrome 41 scores 518 out of 555 points, placing it ahead of the five most popular desktop browsers. Chrome 41 on Android scores 510 out of 555 points.
Security
Chrome periodically retrieves updates of two blacklists (one for phishing and one for malware), and warns users when they attempt to visit a site flagged as potentially harmful. This service is also made available for use by others via a free public API called "Google Safe Browsing API".
Chrome uses a process-allocation model to sandbox tabs. Using the principle of least privilege, each tab process cannot interact with critical memory functions (e.g. OS memory, user files) or other tab processes — similar to Microsofts "Protected Mode" used by Internet Explorer 9 or greater. The Sandbox Team is said to have "taken this existing process boundary and made it into a jail." This enforces a computer security model whereby there are two levels of multilevel security (user and sandbox) and the sandbox can only respond to communication requests initiated by the user. On Linux sandbox uses the compose mode.
Since 2008, Chrome has been faulted for not including a master password to prevent casual access to a users passwords. Chrome developers have indicated that a master password does not provide real security against determined hackers and have refused to implement one. Bugs filed on this issue have been marked "WontFix". As of Feb 2014, the Windows version asks the user to enter the Windows account password before showing saved passwords.
In January 2015, TorrentFreak reported that using Chrome when connected to the internet using a VPN can be a serious security issue due to the browsers support for Web RTC.
Security vulnerabilities
No security vulnerabilities in Chrome were exploited in the three years of Pwn2Own from 2009–2011.
At Pwn2Own 2012, Chrome was defeated by a French team who used zero day exploits in the version of Flash shipped with Chrome to take complete control of a fully patched 64-bit Windows 7 PC using a booby-trapped website that overcame Chromes sandboxing.
