Over the years, Chrome has become the most widely used web browser in the world and has changed the way we surf online. Here's how
Google Chrome, the famous web browser from Mountain View, turns ten years old. It's been an impressive journey from having only 1% of the world market in its first year of launch to being the most used browser on PCs and smartphones today.
In these ten years, not only have Chrome's features and loading speed changed, but the way we approach the web has also changed. The Internet has now become an everyday tool that we use both for work and in our free time. Much of our online change is also due to the continuous development of Chrome. Extensions, tools and functions for managing pages, not only online but also offline, have made browsing the Internet easier, faster and more intuitive. So here is a list of the changes that have made Chrome the most used web browser in the world and how these improvements have changed the way we use the Net.
Omnibox
It may seem incredible to most but at the time of their widespread diffusion, the first web browsers had two separate search fields, one dedicated to the URLs of the various sites and the other for common searches within the browser. At the time of its launch Chrome combined these two search fields. In practice, online searches could always be done within the bar inside the browser but also from the URL field. In practice, for the first time with Chrome there was no need to know the exact URL of a site, it was enough to use some keywords for the browser to understand what we were looking for and show us a list of related results. The combination of the two previously used functions was called Omnibox, and the URL box for intelligent searches for the first time could also be used to retrieve sites visited in the past. For example, you could type letters into the URL bar and get search suggestions based on what you had already viewed online. Moreover, compared to other browsers on the market at that time, Chrome was the one with the cleanest, most intuitive and efficient graphical interface.
Incognito Browsing
To tell the truth, it wasn't Google who invented incognito browsing on web browsers. That title should be awarded to Apple with its Safari, which was the first to enable the private browsing feature. The merit of Mountain View, however, was to make, with Chrome, the function popular to most users. The success of Google and the resulting concerns about privacy when searching online have led many people to prefer an incognito mode.
It's the fastest browser
Chrome's success is largely due to one factor: it is the fastest web browser, among the most used ones, ever. Google has claimed that Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine can process JavaScript ten times faster than Safari or Mozilla Firefox. While according to Mountain View's estimates Microsoft's IE7 used on Edge would be 56 times slower. This speed has allowed the birth of many extensions, applications and tools dedicated to the browser and that help users to do many tasks.
The management of navigation tabs
Another great point in favor of Google Chrome is the management of individual navigation tabs. In fact, on Chrome each tab has its own defined processing. This means that if we work on 20 different web pages and unfortunately one of them has a bug and stops working, the other 19 will remain intact and navigable, without causing too many disruptions. It must be said that this system requires a lot of battery and RAM of your computer, so if you use a device with basic features you may not be so happy with this approach "one card-one process".
Ad management
To say that Google wants to prevent us from seeing annoying ads during our web browsing would be false. But it is true that Mountain View in these years of Chrome has repeatedly cornered fraudulent advertisers and regulated the use of video ads and pop-ups on websites. Remember those sudden ads that would start on some sites in the bottom right or left corner in the form of videos? Google restricted them and required websites to put them on silent mode. Not to mention the banners or pop-ups that appeared suddenly in the navigation pages, even these Chrome has banned them by blocking from its search engine portals that did not comply with these rules. And considering that it's the most used browser in the world almost everyone has adapted making our online browsing better and smoother.
From web browser to operating system
Google Chrome is the first web browser in history to have also become an operating system. Chrome OS is currently running on 2-in-1 computers and Chromebook notebooks. At the moment these devices are still not too widespread, especially in Europe, but slowly they are gaining a slice of the market. Also because in the United States Google has worked very well with schools, where about 60% of students use just a Chromebook to help them with their studies.