
The Google Chrome Comic (2008) - sillysaurus3
http://www.scottmccloud.com/googlechrome/
======
savanaly
Took me a little while to realize the page you see when you load that url is
just an excerpt from the comic. The whole thing is here:
[https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html](https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html).

~~~
sillysaurus3
Yeah, I wasn't sure whether to link that instead. The comic is delightful, but
not too discoverable.

Anyone remember what it was like to open Chrome for the first time in '08 or
so? It was incredible. The design was the embodiment of fresh, wide-eyed
optimism.

~~~
ameliaquining
It was pretty amazing. That was the day I finally ditched IE for good.

~~~
jonnytran
Yeah, it also felt blazingly fast. Chrome is still fast now, but sites and web
apps have added so much bloat that they cancel each other out. Back then, on
the other hand, Chrome was lightning compared to the standard experience with
any other browser.

~~~
chii
May be the browser should institute a 'lite' mode which kills js execution
after some 60ms. If the content doesn't show up by then, an error is shown
(rather than a broken page).

~~~
codedokode
Then user could just disable Javascript.

------
jdoliner
> A multi-process design means using a bit more memory up front. Each process
> has a fixed additional cost. But over time it will mean LESS MEMORY BLOAT.

Unfortunately, it hasn't quite worked out that way.

~~~
sillysaurus3
Someone pointed out that websites have grown by ~10x since 2008, so a lot of
the memory usage may have been unavoidable. It'd be interesting to know what
the hypothetical lower-bound is.

~~~
482794793792894
I think, the hypothetical lower-bound would put webpages onto the hard drive
whenever possible, therefore not really being dependent on webpage size...

~~~
sillysaurus3
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with backup tapes
hurtling down the highway."

------
operafan2008
We who were Opera fans got really upset over this because Chrome borrowed a
lot of ideas from it without giving it any credit.

~~~
nxc18
As an IE fan I was annoyed that they stole porn mode (IE announcd InPrivate
before chrome existed). I still know quite a few people who think Chrome
invented incognito and that IE ripped it off.

Now that I look it up, apparently the idea started with Safari, but it didn't
get much press.

I think the biggest innovation in chrome was how rapidly they shipped. Chrome
copy-catted on hardware accelerated rendering and porn mode, but shipped first
in both cases.

------
ronilan
Yay! That's the one that arrived in Germany a day early
([http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-09-01-n47.html](http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-09-01-n47.html))

P.S - I wonder is Sundar figured out how "shipping works at Google" yet..
([https://youtu.be/LRmrMiOWdfc](https://youtu.be/LRmrMiOWdfc))

------
natecavanaugh
I remember having a discussion with a co-worker the day they announced, and he
swore Chrome would go nowhere, and while I definitely thought it would be an
uphill battle, I brought up the fact that their home page is their greatest
advertising opportunity (now, they've very smartly moved that role to the less
valuable, but still insanely high traffic, properties). So I thought they
definitely _could_ pull it off, but a year before chrome, I stupidly thought
WebKit should just fold up shop and adopt Gecko. So obviously I can't really
predict much.

But then I actually tried it as a secondary browser for about a week, and fell
in love.

Not long after, I finally realized two things: 1\. Speed is the killer
feature, not just of chrome, but of any software. 2\. The auto update feature,
on every platform (such as iOS' app store) and browser, was the most ingenious
of the two. As a web dev, my biggest worry was the potential chaos, some of
which has happened, but waaaay less than I could have ever hoped. They truly
did make the updates a first class experience from the developer to the
different cases of users.

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nxc18
Wow, I remember the first time I used chrome all the way back in 2008. It was
a little buggy (it didn't support flash properly at first iirc) but it sure
was fast.

Now it has all the features, is still fast, and just generally is more awesome
than the other windows browsers, and the other mac browsers, and from most of
the Linux desktops I've seen, the other Linux browsers.

I know it's a privacy issue and I don't particularly like boosting Google's
numbers, but I don't see myself switching away anytime soon.

------
MichaelBurge
> but as time goes on, fragmentation results -- little bits of memory still
> get used even when a tab gets closed

Don't you still have the same problem with multiple processes, just moved to
the kernel for them to deal with? It seems like if you kept everything in-
process, you could use custom allocators and apply a sufficiently smart
architecture so nothing stayed longer than necessary.

~~~
anyfoo
I think it's considered a pretty bad leak in the kernel if terminated
processes leave unreclaimable memory behind.

