Google Chrome is a

cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

developed by

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

components from

Apple WebKit WebKit is a browser engine developed by Apple Inc., Apple and primarily used in its Safari (web browser), Safari web browser, as well as on the iOS and iPadOS version of any web browser. WebKit is also used by the BlackBerry Browser, PlayStation ...

and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

, and also for Android, where it is the default browser. The browser is also the main component of

ChromeOS ChromeOS, sometimes stylized as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is a Linux-based operating system designed by Google. It is derived from the open-source ChromiumOS and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user interfa ...

, where it serves as the platform for

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serv ...

s. Most of Chrome's

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...

comes from Google's free and open-source software project ''Chromium'', but Chrome is licensed as proprietary

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for t ...

WebKit WebKit is a browser engine developed by Apple and primarily used in its Safari web browser, as well as on the iOS and iPadOS version of any web browser. WebKit is also used by the BlackBerry Browser, PlayStation consoles beginning from the P ...

was the original

rendering engine Rendering or image synthesis is the process of generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model by means of a computer program. The resulting image is referred to as the render. Multiple models can be defined ...

, but Google eventually forked it to create the Blink engine; all Chrome variants except iOS now use Blink. ,

StatCounter StatCounter is a web traffic analysis website started in 1999. Access to basic services is free to use and advanced services can cost between and US$119 a month. StatCounter is based in Dublin, Ireland. The statistics from StatCounter are used ...

estimates that Chrome has a 67% worldwide browser market share (after peaking at 72.38% in November 2018) on

personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...

s (PC), is most used on tablets (having surpassed Safari), and is also dominant on smartphones and at 65% across all platforms combined. Because of this success, Google has expanded the "Chrome" brand name to other products: ChromeOS, Chromecast,

Chromebook A Chromebook (sometimes stylized in lowercase as chromebook) is a laptop or tablet running the Linux-based ChromeOS as its operating system. Initially designed to heavily rely on web applications for tasks using the Google Chrome browser, Chrome ...

, Chromebit, Chromebox, and Chromebase.

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 A browser war is competition for dominance in the usage share of web browsers. The "first browser war," (1995-2001) pitted Microsoft's Internet Explorer against Netscape's Navigator. Browser wars continued with the decline of Internet Explore ...

". After co-founders

Sergey Brin Sergey Mikhailovich Brin (russian: link=no, Сергей Михайлович Брин; born August 21, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist, and internet entrepreneur, who co-founded Google with Larry Page. Brin was th ...

and

Larry Page Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist and internet entrepreneur. He is best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin. Page was the chief executive officer of Google from 1997 unti ...

hired several Mozilla Firefox developers and built a demonstration of Chrome, Schmidt said that "It was so good that it essentially forced me to change my mind." In September 2004, rumors of Google building a web browser first appeared. Online journals and U.S. newspapers stated at the time that Google was hiring former Microsoft web developers among others. It also came shortly after the release of Mozilla Firefox 1.0, which was surging in popularity and taking market share from

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems ( ...

, which had noted security problems. Development of the browser began in 2006, spearheaded by

Sundar Pichai Pichai Sundararajan (born June 10, 1972), better known as Sundar Pichai (), is an Indian-American business executive. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Alphabet Inc. and its subsidiary Google. Born in Madurai, India, Pichai earned hi ...

. Chrome was "largely developed" in Google's Kitchener office.

Announcement

The release announcement was originally scheduled for September 3, 2008, and a comic by

Scott McCloud Scott McCloud (born Scott McLeod; June 10, 1960) is an American cartoonist and comics theorist. He is best known for his non-fiction books about comics: ''Understanding Comics'' (1993), '' Reinventing Comics'' (2000), and '' Making Comics'' (20 ...

was to be sent to journalists and bloggers explaining the features within the new browser. Copies intended for Europe were shipped early and

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

blogger Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped made 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 Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

, and mentioned it on their official blog along with an explanation for the early release. The product was named "Chrome" as an initial development project code name, because it is associated with fast cars and speed. Google kept the development project name as the final release name, as a "cheeky" or ironic moniker, as one of the main aims was to minimize the user interface chrome.

Public release

The browser was first publicly released, officially as a

beta version A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

, on September 2, 2008, for

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

and newer, and with support for 43 languages, and later as a "stable" public release on December 11, 2008. On that 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

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 post saying 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 on

BrowserChoice.eu BrowserChoice.eu was a website created by Microsoft in March 2010 following a decision in the European Union Microsoft competition case. The case involved legal proceedings by the European Union against Microsoft and found that, by including Inte ...

European Economic Area The European Economic Area (EEA) was established via the ''Agreement on the European Economic Area'', an international agreement which enables the extension of the European Union's single market to member states of the European Free Trade As ...

users of Microsoft Windows in 2010.

Development

Chrome was assembled from 25 different code libraries from Google and third parties such as

Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, w ...

Netscape Portable Runtime In computing, the Netscape Portable Runtime, or NSPR, a platform abstraction library, makes all operating systems it supports appear the same to (for example) Mozilla-style web-browsers. NSPR provides platform independence for non-GUI operatin ...

Network Security Services Network Security Services (NSS) is a collection of cryptographic computer libraries designed to support cross-platform development of security-enabled client and server applications with optional support for hardware TLS/SSL acceleration on th ...

NPAPI Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI) was an application programming interface (API) of the web browsers that allows plugins to be integrated. Initially developed for Netscape browsers, starting in 1995 with Netscape Navigato ...

(dropped as of version 45),

Skia Graphics Engine The Skia Graphics Engine or Skia is an open-source 2D graphics library written in C++. Skia abstracts away platform-specific graphics API (which differ from one to another). Skia Inc. originally developed the library; Google acquired it in 2005, ...

SQLite SQLite (, ) is a database engine written in the C programming language. It is not a standalone app; rather, it is a library that software developers embed in their apps. As such, it belongs to the family of embedded databases. It is the m ...

, and a number of other open-source projects. The V8

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/ emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized h ...

was considered a sufficiently important project to be split off (as was Adobe/

Tamarin The tamarins are squirrel-sized New World monkeys from the family Callitrichidae in the genus ''Saguinus''. They are the first offshoot in the Callitrichidae tree, and therefore are the sister group of a clade formed by the lion tamarins, Goe ...

) and handled by a separate team in Denmark coordinated by Lars Bak. According to Google, existing implementations were designed "for small programs, where the performance and interactivity of the system weren't that important", but

s such as

Gmail Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clients via the POP and ...

"are using the web browser to the fullest when it comes to DOM manipulations and

", and therefore would significantly benefit from a JavaScript engine that could work faster. Chrome initially used the WebKit rendering engine to display web pages. In 2013, they forked the WebCore component to create their own layout engine Blink. Based on WebKit, Blink only uses WebKit's "WebCore" components, while substituting other components, such as its own multi-process architecture, in place of WebKit's native implementation. Chrome is internally tested with

unit testing In computer programming, unit testing is a software testing method by which individual units of source code—sets of one or more computer program modules together with associated control data, usage procedures, and operating procedures&md ...

, automated testing of scripted user actions,

fuzz testing Fuzz may refer to: * Fuzz (film), ''Fuzz'' (film), a 1972 American comedy * ''Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law'', a nonfiction book by Mary Roach * The fuzz, a List of slang terms for police officers, slang term for police officers Music * Fuzz ...

, as well as WebKit's 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 A gear is a rotating circular machine part having cut teeth or, in the case of a cogwheel or gearwheel, inserted teeth (called ''cogs''), which mesh with another (compatible) toothed part to transmit (convert) torque and speed. The basic p ...

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 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

standards. In March 2011, Google introduced a new simplified logo to replace the previous 3D logo that had been used since the project's inception. Google designer Steve Rura explained the company reasoning for the change: "Since Chrome is all about making your web experience as easy and clutter-free as possible, we refreshed the Chrome icon to better represent these sentiments. A simpler icon embodies the Chrome spiritto make the web quicker, lighter, and easier for all." 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. Despite this, on November 6, 2012, Google released a version of Chrome on Windows which added

hardware-accelerated Hardware acceleration is the use of computer hardware designed to perform specific functions more efficiently when compared to software running on a general-purpose central processing unit (CPU). Any transformation of data that can be calcul ...

H.264 video decoding. In October 2013,

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

announced that it was open-sourcing its H.264 codecs and would cover all fees required. On February 7, 2012, Google launched ''Google Chrome Beta'' for

Android 4.0 Android Ice Cream Sandwich (or Android 4.0) is the 9th major version of the Android mobile operating system developed by Google. Unveiled on October 19, 2011, Android 4.0 builds upon the significant changes made by the tablet-only release Androi ...

devices. On many new devices with Android 4.1 and later preinstalled, Chrome is the default browser. In May 2017, Google announced a version of Chrome for augmented reality and

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), e ...

devices.

Version 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 bar In a web browser, the address bar (also location bar or URL bar) is the element that shows the current URL. The user can type a URL into it to navigate to a chosen website. In most modern browsers, non-URLs are automatically sent to a search eng ...

and search bar into the ''omnibox'' or ''omnibar'' Chrome also has a reputation for strong browser performance.

Web standards support

The first release of Google Chrome passed both the

Acid1 Acid1, originally called the Box Acid Test, was a test page for web browsers. It was developed in October 1998 and was important in establishing baseline interoperability between early web browsers, especially for the Cascading Style Sheets 1.0 ...

and

Acid2 Acid2 is a webpage that test web browsers' functionality in displaying aspects of HTML markup, CSS 2.1 styling, PNG images, and data URIs. The test page was released on 13 April 2005 by the Web Standards Project. The Acid2 test page will be ...

tests. Beginning with version 4.0, Chrome has passed all aspects of the

Acid3 The Acid3 test is a web test page from the Web Standards Project that checks a web browser's compliance with elements of various web standards, particularly the Document Object Model (DOM) and JavaScript. If the test is successful, the results ...

test. , Chrome has very good support for JavaScript/

ECMAScript ECMAScript (; ES) is a JavaScript standard intended to ensure the interoperability of web pages across different browsers. It is standardized by Ecma International in the documenECMA-262 ECMAScript is commonly used for client-side scripting o ...

according to

Ecma International Ecma International () is a nonprofit standards organization for information and communication systems. It acquired its current name in 1994, when the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) changed its name to reflect the organization ...

's ECMAScript standards conformance Test 262 (version ES5.1 May 18, 2012). 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/11,578 passed. For comparison, Firefox 19 scored 193 failed/11,752 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 The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...

, 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. Chrome 44 scores 526, only 29 points less than the maximum score.

User interface

By default, the main

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

includes back, forward, refresh/cancel and menu buttons. A home button is not shown by default, but can be added through the Settings page to take the user to the new tab page or a custom home page. Tabs are the main component of Chrome's user interface and have been moved to the top of the window rather than below the controls. This subtle change contrasts with many existing tabbed browsers which are based on

windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

and contain tabs. Tabs, with their state, can be transferred seamlessly between window containers by dragging. Each tab has its own set of controls, including the ''Omnibox''. The ''Omnibox'' is a URL box that combines the functions of both the address bar and search box. If a user enters the URL of a site previously searched from, Chrome allows pressing ''Tab'' to search the site again directly from the Omnibox. When a user starts typing in the Omnibox, Chrome provides suggestions for previously visited sites (based on the URL or in-page text), popular websites (not necessarily visited before powered by

Google Instant Google Search (also known simply as Google) is a search engine provided by Google. Handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day, it has a 92% share of the global search engine market. It is also the most-visited website in the world. The ...

), and popular searches. Although Instant can be turned off, suggestions based on previously visited sites cannot be turned off. Chrome will also

autocomplete Autocomplete, or word completion, is a feature in which an application predicts the rest of a word a user is typing. In Android and iOS smartphones, this is called predictive text. In graphical user interfaces, users can typically press the ta ...

the URLs of sites visited often. If a user types keywords into the Omnibox that don't match any previously visited websites and presses enter, Chrome will conduct the search using the default search engine. One of Chrome's differentiating features is the ''New Tab Page'', which can replace the browser

home page A home page (or homepage) is the main web page of a website. The term may also refer to the start page shown in a web browser when the application first opens. Usually, the home page is located at the root of the website's domain or subdomain. ...

and is displayed when a new tab is created. Originally, this showed thumbnails of the nine most visited websites, along with frequent searches, recent bookmarks, and recently closed tabs; similar to

and

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current ...

with

Google Toolbar Google Toolbar is a discontinued web browser toolbar for Internet Explorer, developed by Google. It was first released in 2000 for Internet Explorer 5. Google Toolbar was also distributed as a Mozilla plug-in for Firefox from September 2005 to J ...

, or Opera's

Speed Dial Speed dial is a function available on many telephone systems allowing the user to place a call by pressing a reduced number of keys. This function is particularly useful for phone users who dial certain numbers on a regular basis. In most case ...

. In Google Chrome 2.0, the New Tab Page was updated to allow users to hide thumbnails they did not want to appear. Starting in version 3.0, the New Tab Page was revamped to display thumbnails of the eight most visited websites. The thumbnails could be rearranged, pinned, and removed. Alternatively, a list of text links could be displayed instead of thumbnails. It also features a "Recently closed" bar that shows recently closed tabs and a "tips" section that displays hints and tricks for using the browser. Starting with Google Chrome 3.0, users can install themes to alter the appearance of the browser. Many free third-party themes are provided in an online gallery, accessible through a "Get themes" button in Chrome's options. Chrome includes a ''bookmarks'' submenu that lists the user's bookmarks, provides easy access to Chrome's ''Bookmark Manager,'' and allows the user to toggle a ''bookmarks bar'' on or off. On January 2, 2019, Google introduced Native Dark Theme for Chrome on

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

Built-in tools

Starting with Google Chrome 4.1 the application added a built-in translation bar using

Google Translate Google Translate is a multilingual neural machine translation service developed by Google to translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a website interface, a mobile app for Android and iOS, and an API ...

. Language translation is currently available for 52 languages. When Chrome detects a foreign language other than the user's preferred language set during the installation time, it asks the user whether or not to translate. 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. For web developers, Chrome features an element inspector which allows users to look into the DOM and see what makes up the webpage. Chrome has special URLs that load application-specific pages instead of websites or files on disk. Chrome also has a built-in ability to enable experimental features. Originally called about:labs, the address was changed to about:flags to make it less obvious to casual users. The desktop edition of Chrome is able to save pages as HTML with assets in a "_files" subfolder, or as unprocessed HTML-only document. It also offers an option to save in the

MHTML MHTML, an initialism of "MIME encapsulation of aggregate HTML documents", is a Web archive file format used to combine, in a single computer file, the HTML code and its companion resources (such as images) that are represented by external hyperl ...

format.

Desktop shortcuts and apps

Chrome allows users to make local desktop shortcuts that open

s in the browser. The browser, when opened in this way, contains none of the regular interface except for the title bar, so as not to "interrupt anything the user is trying to do". This allows web applications to run alongside local software (similar to

Mozilla Prism Mozilla Prism (formerly WebRunner) is a discontinued project which integrated web applications with the desktop, allowing web applications to be launched from the desktop and configured independently of the default web browser. As of November 201 ...

and Fluid). This feature, according to Google, would be enhanced with the

Chrome Web Store Chrome Web Store is Google's online store for its Chrome web browser. As of 2019, Chrome Web Store hosts about 190,000 extensions and web apps. History Chrome Web Store was publicly unveiled in December 2010, and was opened on February 11, 20 ...

, a one-stop web-based web applications directory which opened in December 2010. In September 2013, Google started making Chrome apps "For your desktop". This meant offline access, desktop shortcuts, and less dependence on Chrome—apps launch in a window separate from Chrome, and look more like native applications.

Chrome Web Store

Announced on December 7, 2010, the

allows users to install web applications as extensions to the browser, although most of these extensions function simply as links to popular web pages and/or games, some of the apps like

Springpad Springpad was a free online application and web service that allowed its registered users to save, organize and share collected ideas and information. As users added content to their Springpad accounts, the application automatically identified a ...

do provide extra features like offline access. The themes and extensions have also been tightly integrated into the new store, allowing users to search the entire catalog of Chrome extras. The Chrome Web Store was opened on February 11, 2011, with the release of Google Chrome 9.0.

Extensions

Browser extensions are able to modify Google Chrome. They are supported by the browser's desktop edition. These extensions are written using web technologies like

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaSc ...

, and CSS. They are distributed through

, initially known as the Google Chrome Extensions Gallery. On September 9, 2009, Google enabled extensions by default on Chrome's developer channel, and provided several sample extensions for testing. In December, the Google Chrome Extensions Gallery beta began with approximately 300 extensions. It was launched on January 25, 2010, along with Google Chrome 4.0, containing approximately 1500 extensions. In 2014, Google started preventing some Windows users from installing extensions not hosted on the

. The following year Google reported a "75% drop in customer support help requests for uninstalling unwanted extensions" which led them to expand this restriction to all Windows and Mac users.

Notable examples

Adblock Plus Adblock Plus (ABP) is a free and open-source browser extension for content-filtering and ad blocking. It is developed by developer Wladimir Palant's Eyeo GmbH, a German software company. The extension has been released for Mozilla Firefox (inc ...

* Adblock for Chrome *

Cut the Rope Cut may refer to: Common uses * The act of cutting, the separation of an object into two through acutely-directed force ** A type of wound ** Cut (archaeology), a hole dug in the past ** Cut (clothing), the style or shape of a garment ** Cut ( ...

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, U.S. that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and client software. Dropbox was founded in 2007 ...

* Evernote Web *

Facebook Messenger Messenger is a proprietary instant messaging app and platform developed by Meta Platforms. Originally developed as Facebook Chat in 2008, the company revamped its messaging service in 2010, released standalone iOS and Android apps in 2011, and ...

Ghostery Ghostery is a free and open-source privacy and security-related browser extension and mobile browser application. Since February 2017, it has been owned by the German company Cliqz International GmbH (formerly owned by Evidon, Inc., which wa ...

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets ( Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...

HTTPS Everywhere HTTPS Everywhere is a free and open-source browser extension for Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi and Firefox for Android, which is developed collaboratively by The Tor Project and the Electronic Frontier F ...

Pandora Radio Pandora is a subscription-based music streaming service owned by Sirius XM Holdings based in Oakland, California, United States. The service carries a focus on recommendations based on the " Music Genome Project" — a means of classifying indi ...

* Pixlr Express *

Privacy Badger Privacy Badger is a free and open-source browser extension for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Firefox for Android created by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Its purpose is to promote a balanced approach to internet p ...

Streamus Streamus is a discontinued open-source Chrome extension that acted as a music player for YouTube, allowing users to listen to YouTube videos as music without having YouTube open. Features Streamus features include the ability to search for YouT ...

(discontinued) * Turn Off the Lights *

TweetDeck TweetDeck is a social media dashboard application for management of Twitter accounts. Originally an independent app, TweetDeck was subsequently acquired by Twitter Inc. and integrated into Twitter's interface. It has long ranked as one of the most ...

Stop Tony Meow Stop Tony Meow is a browser extension which replaces photos of former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott with images of cats and kittens on websites. Initially created for Google Chrome, the extension was expanded to Safari and Firefox la ...

uBlock Origin uBlock Origin (; "" ) is a free and open-source browser extension for content filtering, including ad blocking. The extension is available for Chrome, Chromium, Edge, Firefox, Opera, Pale Moon, as well as versions of Safari prior to 13 ...

Speed

The

used by Chrome, the

V8 JavaScript engine V8 is a free and open-source JavaScript engine developed by the Chromium Project for Google Chrome and Chromium web browsers. The project’s creator is Lars Bak. The first version of the V8 engine was released at the same time as the first v ...

, has features such as '' dynamic code generation'', ''hidden class transitions'', and '' precise garbage collection''. In 2008, several websites performed benchmark tests using the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark tool as well as Google's own set of computationally intense benchmarks, which include ray tracing and

constraint solving Constraint may refer to: * Constraint (computer-aided design), a demarcation of geometrical characteristics between two or more entities or solid modeling bodies * Constraint (mathematics), a condition of an optimization problem that the solution m ...

. They unanimously reported that Chrome performed much faster than all competitors against which it had been tested, including Safari (for Windows),

Firefox 3.0 Mozilla Firefox 3.0 is a version of the Firefox web browser released on June 17, 2008, by the Mozilla Corporation. Firefox 3.0 uses version 1.9 of the Gecko layout engine for displaying web pages. This version fixes many bugs, improves standar ...

Internet Explorer 7 Windows Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) (codenamed Rincon) is a web browser for Windows. It was released by Microsoft on October 18, 2006, as the seventh version of Internet Explorer and the successor to Internet Explorer 6. Internet Explorer 7 is pa ...

Opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...

, and

Internet Explorer 8 Windows Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is a web browser for Windows. It was released by Microsoft on March 19, 2009, as the eighth version of Internet Explorer and the successor to Internet Explorer 7. It was the default browser in Windows 7 (later def ...

.{ However, on October 11, 2010, independent tests of JavaScript performance, Chrome has been scoring just behind Opera's Presto engine since it was updated in version 10.5. On September 3, 2008, Mozilla responded by stating that their own

TraceMonkey SpiderMonkey is the first JavaScript engine, written by Brendan Eich at Netscape Communications, later released as open source and currently maintained by the Mozilla Foundation. It is used in the Firefox web browser. History Eich "wrote J ...

JavaScript engine (then in beta), was faster than Chrome's V8 engine in some tests.

John Resig John Resig is an American software engineer and entrepreneur, best known as the creator and lead developer of the jQuery JavaScript library. , he works as the chief software architect at Khan Academy. History Resig graduated with an undergraduate ...

, Mozilla's JavaScript evangelist, further commented on the performance of different browsers on Google's own suite, commenting on Chrome's "decimating" of the other browsers, but he questioned whether Google's suite was representative of real programs. He stated that Firefox 3.0 performed poorly on

recursion Recursion (adjective: ''recursive'') occurs when a thing is defined in terms of itself or of its type. Recursion is used in a variety of disciplines ranging from linguistics to logic. The most common application of recursion is in mathemati ...

-intensive benchmarks, such as those of Google, because the Mozilla team had not implemented recursion-tracing yet. Two weeks after Chrome's launch in 2008, the WebKit team announced a new JavaScript engine, SquirrelFish Extreme, citing a 36% speed improvement over Chrome's V8 engine. Like most major web browsers, Chrome uses DNS prefetching to speed up website lookups, as do other browsers like Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer (called DNS Pre-resolution), and in

as a UserScript (not built-in). Chrome formerly used their now-deprecated

SPDY SPDY (pronounced "speedy") is an obsolete open-specification communication protocol developed for transporting web content. SPDY became the basis for HTTP/2 specification. However, HTTP/2 diverged from SPDY and eventually HTTP/2 subsumed all u ...

protocol instead of only

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...

when communicating with servers that support it, such as Google services, Facebook, Twitter. SPDY support was removed in Chrome version 51. This was due to SPDY being replaced by

HTTP/2 HTTP/2 (originally named HTTP/2.0) is a major revision of the HTTP network protocol used by the World Wide Web. It was derived from the earlier experimental SPDY protocol, originally developed by Google. HTTP/2 was developed by the HTTP Working ...

, a standard that was based upon it. In November 2019, Google said it was working on several "speed badging" systems that let visitors know why a page is taking time to show up. The variations include simple text warnings and more subtle signs that indicate a site is slow. No date has been given for when the badging system will be included with the Chrome browser. Chrome formerly supported a Data Saver feature for making pages load faster called Lite Mode. Previously, Chrome engineers Addy Osmani and Scott Little announced Lite Mode would automatically lazy-load images and iframes for faster page loads. Lite Mode was switched off in Chrome 100, citing a decrease in mobile data costs for many countries.

Security

Chrome periodically retrieves updates of two blacklists (one for

phishing Phishing is a type of social engineering where an attacker sends a fraudulent (e.g., spoofed, fake, or otherwise deceptive) message designed to trick a person into revealing sensitive information to the attacker or to deploy malicious softwa ...

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 An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

called "

Google Safe Browsing Google Safe Browsing is a service from Google that warns users when they attempt to navigate to a dangerous website or download dangerous files. Safe Browsing also notifies webmasters when their websites are compromised by malicious actors and h ...

API". Chrome uses a process-allocation model to sandbox tabs. Using the

principle of least privilege In information security, computer science, and other fields, the principle of least privilege (PoLP), also known as the principle of minimal privilege (PoMP) or the principle of least authority (PoLA), requires that in a particular abstraction la ...

, each tab process cannot interact with critical memory functions (e.g. OS memory, user files) or other tab processessimilar to Microsoft's "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 A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These program ...

whereby there are two levels of

multilevel security Multilevel security or multiple levels of security (MLS) is the application of a computer system to process information with incompatible classifications (i.e., at different security levels), permit access by users with different security clearan ...

(''user'' and '' sandbox'') and the ''sandbox'' can only respond to communication requests initiated by the ''user''. On Linux sandboxing uses the

seccomp seccomp (short for secure computing mode) is a computer security facility in the Linux kernel. seccomp allows a process to make a one-way transition into a "secure" state where it cannot make any system calls except exit(), sigreturn(), read() ...

mode. In January 2015,

TorrentFreak __NOTOC__ TorrentFreak (TF) is a blog dedicated to reporting the latest news and trends on the BitTorrent protocol and file sharing, as well as on copyright infringement and digital rights. The website was started in November 2005 by a Dutchma ...

reported that using Chrome when connected to the internet using a VPN can be a serious security issue due to the browser's support for

WebRTC WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) is a free and open-source project providing web browsers and mobile applications with real-time communication (RTC) via application programming interfaces (APIs). It allows audio and video communication to wor ...

. On September 9, 2016, it was reported that starting with Chrome 56, users will be warned when they visit insecure HTTP websites to encourage more sites to make the transition to HTTPS. On December 4, 2018, Google announced its Chrome 71 release with new security features, including a built-in ad featuring system. In addition, Google also announced its plan to crack down on websites that make people involuntarily subscribe to mobile subscription plans. On September 2, 2020, with the release of Chrome 85, Google extended support for Secure DNS in Chrome for Android. DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH), was designed to improve safety and privacy while browsing the web. Under the update, Chrome automatically switches to DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH), if the current DNS provider supports the feature.

Password management

= Windows

= Since 2008, Chrome has been faulted for not including a master password to prevent casual access to a user's 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". , Google Chrome asks the user to enter the Windows account password before showing saved passwords.

= Linux

= On

, Google Chrome/Chromium can store passwords in three ways:

GNOME Keyring GNOME Keyring is a software application designed to store security credentials such as usernames, passwords, and keys, together with a small amount of relevant metadata. The sensitive data is encrypted and stored in a keyring file in the user's ...

KWallet KDE Wallet Manager (KWallet) is free and open-source password management software written in C++ for UNIX-style operating systems. KDE Wallet Manager runs on a Linux-based OS and Its main feature is storing encrypted passwords in KDE Wallets. ...

plain text In computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects (floating-point numbers, images, etc.). It may also include a limit ...

. Google Chrome/Chromium chooses which store to use automatically, based on the

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphica ...

in use. Passwords stored in

or KWallet are encrypted on disk, and access to them is controlled by dedicated daemon software. Passwords stored in plain text are not encrypted. Because of this, when either GNOME Keyring or KWallet is in use, any unencrypted passwords that have been stored previously are automatically moved into the encrypted store. Support for using GNOME Keyring and KWallet was added in version 6, but using these (when available) was not made the default mode until version 12.

= macOS

= As of version 45, the Google Chrome password manager is no longer integrated with

Keychain A keychain (also key fob or keyring) is a small ring or chain of metal to which several keys can be attached. The length of a keychain allows an item to be used more easily than if connected directly to a keyring. Some keychains allow one or b ...

, since the

interoperability Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader defi ...

goal is no longer possible.

Security vulnerabilities

No security vulnerabilities in Chrome were exploited in the three years of Pwn2Own from 2009 to 2011. At Pwn2Own 2012, Chrome was defeated by a French team who used

zero day exploit A zero-day (also known as a 0-day) is a computer-software Vulnerability (computing), vulnerability previously unknown to those who should be interested in its mitigation, like the vendor of the target software. Until the vulnerability is mitigate ...

s in the version of Flash shipped with Chrome to take complete control of a fully patched

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit CPUs and ALUs are those that are based on processor registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. A compu ...

Windows 7 PC using a booby-trapped website that overcame Chrome's sandboxing. Chrome was compromised twice at the 2012 CanSecWest

Pwnium Pwn2Own is a Hacker (computer security), computer hacking contest held annually at the CanSecWest Computer security conference, security conference. First held in April 2007 in Vancouver, the contest is now held twice a year, most recently in Ap ...

. Google's official response to the exploits was delivered by Jason Kersey, who congratulated the researchers, noting "We also believe that both submissions are works of art and deserve wider sharing and recognition." Fixes for these vulnerabilities were deployed within 10 hours of the submission. A significant number of security vulnerabilities in Chrome occur in the

Adobe Flash Player Adobe Flash Player (known in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome as Shockwave Flash) is computer software for viewing multimedia contents, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming audio and video content created on the ...

. For example, the 2016 Pwn2Own successful attack on Chrome relied on four security vulnerabilities. Two of the vulnerabilities were in Flash, one was in Chrome, and one was in the Windows kernel. In 2016, Google announced that it was planning to phase out Flash Player in Chrome, starting in version 53. The first phase of the plan is to disable Flash for ads and "background analytics", with the ultimate goal of disabling it completely by the end of the year, except on specific sites that Google has deemed to be broken without it. Flash would then be re-enabled with the exclusion of ads and background analytics on a site-by-site basis. Leaked documents published by WikiLeaks, codenamed

Vault 7 Vault 7 is a series of documents that WikiLeaks began to publish on 7 March 2017, detailing the activities and capabilities of the United States Central Intelligence Agency to perform electronic surveillance and cyber warfare. The files, dating fr ...

and dated from 2013 to 2016, detail the capabilities of the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

, such as the ability to compromise web browsers (including Google Chrome).

Malware blocking and ad blocking

Google introduced download scanning protection in Chrome 17. In February 2018, Google introduced an

ad blocking Ad blocking or ad filtering is a software capability for blocking or altering online advertising in a web browser, an application or a network. This may be done using browser extensions or other methods. Technologies and native countermeasures ...

feature based on recommendations from the

Interactive Advertising Bureau The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is an American advertising business organization that develops industry standards, conducts research, and provides legal support for the online advertising industry. The organization represents many of th ...

. Sites that employ invasive ads are given a 30-day warning, after which their ads will be blocked. '' Consumer Reports'' recommended users install dedicated ad-blocking tools instead, which offer increased security against malware and tracking.

Plugins

* Chrome supported, up to version 45, plug-ins with the Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (

), so that plug-ins (for example

) run as unrestricted separate processes outside the browser and cannot be sandboxed as tabs are.

ActiveX ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide We ...

is not supported. Since 2010, Adobe Flash has been integral to Chrome and does not need be installed separately. Flash is kept up to date as part of Chrome's own updates.

Java applet Java applets were small applications written in the Java programming language, or another programming language that compiles to Java bytecode, and delivered to users in the form of Java bytecode. The user launched the Java applet from a ...

support was available in Chrome with Java 6 update 12 and above. Support for Java under OS X was provided by a Java Update released on May 18, 2010. * On August 12, 2009, Google introduced a replacement for

that is more portable and more secure called Pepper Plugin API (

PPAPI Google Native Client (NaCl) is a discontinued sandboxing technology for running either a subset of Intel x86, ARM, or MIPS native code, or a portable executable, in a sandbox. It allows safely running native code from a web browser, independen ...

). The default bundled PPAPI Flash Player (or Pepper-based Flash Player) was available on

first, then replaced the NPAPI Flash Player on Linux from Chrome version 20, on Windows from version 21 (which also reduced Flash crashes by 20%), and eventually came to OS X at version 23. * On September 23, 2013, Google announced that it would be deprecating and then removing NPAPI support. NPAPI support was removed from Linux in Chrome release 35. NPAPI plugins like Java can no longer work in Chrome (but there are workarounds for Flash by using PPAPI Flash Player on Linux including for Chromium). * On April 14, 2015, Google released Chrome v42, disabling the NPAPI by default. This makes plugins that do not have a PPAPI plugin counterpart incompatible with Chrome, such as

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mos ...

Silverlight Microsoft Silverlight is a discontinued application framework designed for writing and running rich web applications, similar to Adobe Inc., Adobe's Run time environment, runtime, Adobe Flash. A plugin for Silverlight is still available for a v ...

and

Unity Unity may refer to: Buildings * Unity Building, Oregon, Illinois, US; a historic building * Unity Building (Chicago), Illinois, US; a skyscraper * Unity Buildings, Liverpool, UK; two buildings in England * Unity Chapel, Wyoming, Wisconsin, US; ...

. However, NPAPI support could be enabled through the chrome://flags menu, until the release of version 45 on September 1, 2015, that removed NPAPI support entirely.

Privacy

Incognito mode

The

private browsing Private browsing is a privacy feature in some web browsers. When operating in such a mode, the browser creates a temporary session that is isolated from the browser's main session and user data. Browsing history is not saved, and local data as ...

feature called ''Incognito'' mode prevents the browser from locally storing any

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

information,

cookies A cookie is a baked or cooked snack or dessert that is typically small, flat and sweet. It usually contains flour, sugar, egg, and some type of oil, fat, or butter. It may include other ingredients such as raisins, oats, chocolate chi ...

, site data, or form inputs. Downloaded files and bookmarks will be stored. In addition, user activity is not hidden from visited websites or the Internet service provider. Incognito mode is similar to the private browsing feature in other web browsers. It does not prevent saving in all windows: "You can switch between an incognito window and any regular windows you have open. You'll only be in incognito mode when you're using the incognito window". The iOS version of Chrome also supports the optional ability to lock incognito tabs with Face ID, Touch ID or the device's passcode.

Listening capabilities

In June 2015, the Debian developer community discovered that Chromium 43 and Chrome 43 were programmed to download the ''Hotword Shared Module'', which could enable the

OK Google Google Search (also known simply as Google) is a search engine provided by Google. Handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day, it has a 92% share of the global search engine market. It is also the most-visited website in the world. Th ...

voice recognition extension, although by default it was "off". This raised privacy concerns in the media. The module was removed in Chrome 45, which was released on September 1, 2015, and was only present in Chrome 43 and 44.

User tracking concerns

Chrome sends details about its users and their activities to

through both optional and non-optional user tracking mechanisms. Some of the tracking mechanisms can be optionally enabled and disabled through the installation interface and through the browser's options dialog. Unofficial builds, such as SRWare Iron, seek to remove these features from the browser altogether. The RLZ feature is not included in the Chromium browser either. In March 2010, Google devised a new method to collect installation statistics: the unique ID token included with Chrome is now used for only the first connection that Google Update makes to its server. The optional suggestion service included in Google Chrome has been criticized because it provides the information typed into the Omnibox to the search provider before the user even hits return. This allows the search engine to provide URL suggestions, but also provides them with web use information tied to an

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

. The optional feature to use a web service to help resolve spelling errors has privacy implications. A 2019 review by ''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large na ...

'' technology columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler found that in a typical week of browsing, Chrome allowed thousands of more cookies to be stored than Mozilla Firefox. Fowler pointed out that because of its advertising businesses, despite the privacy controls it offers users, Google is a major producer of third-party cookies and has a financial interest in collecting user data; he recommended switching to

Apple Safari Safari is a web browser developed by Apple. It is built into macOS, iOS, and iPadOS, and uses Apple's open-source browser engine, WebKit, which was derived from KHTML. Safari was introduced in Mac OS X Panther in January 2003. It was inclu ...

, or Chromium-based Brave. In January 2021,

Alphabet An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllab ...

stated it was making progress on developing privacy-friendly alternatives which would replace third-party cookies currently being used by advertisers and companies to track browsing habits. Google has promised to phase out the use of cookies in their web-browser in 2022, implementing their FLoC technology instead. The announcement came after scrutiny from both the United States and the United Kingdom: the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority opened a formal probe into Google's claim to end cookie support in January of the same year and the antitrust lawsuit against the company in December 2020 by ten U.S. states. Chrome's future switch to FLoC had drawn criticism from

DuckDuckGo DuckDuckGo (DDG) is an internet search engine that emphasizes protecting searchers' privacy and avoiding the filter bubble of personalized search results. DuckDuckGo does not show search results from content farms. It uses various APIs o ...

, Brave and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. On January 25, 2022, Google announced it had killed off development of its FLoC technologies and proposed the new Topics API to replace it. Topics is similarly aimed at removing third-party cookies, using one's weekly web activity to determine a set of five interests. Topics is supposed to refresh every three weeks, changing the type of ads served the user and not retaining the gathered data. {, class="wikitable" , + Tracking methods ! Method ! Information sent ! When ! Optional? ! Opt-in? , - , valign="top" , Installation , Randomly generated token included in an installer; used to measure the success rate of Google Chrome once at installation , On installation , , , - , valign="top" , RLZ identifier ,

Encoded In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communication ...

string, according to Google, contains non-identifying information on where Chrome was downloaded from and its installation week; it is used to measure promotional campaigns; Google provides source code to decode this string Can be disabled in ChromeOS. For Chrome browsers running in all other operating systems: * Desktop versions of Chrome can avoid it by downloading the browser directly from Google. * Mobile versions of Chrome always send the RLZ identifier on first launch. , * On Google search query * On first launch and first use of address bar ,
RLZ can be disabled in Chrome OS, and is not sent on desktop versions of Chrome if it was downloaded directly from Google. RLZ cannot be disabled on mobile versions of Chrome. , , - , valign="top" , clientID , Unique identifier along with user preferences, logs of use metrics and crashes , , Controlled by the setting "Send usage statistics and error reports"; default off , , - , valign="top" , Omnibox predictions , Text typed into the

is sent to the user's search engine when not in incognito mode. When in incognito mode, the suggestions are created on-device instead. , While typing , , , - , valign="top" , Google Update , Information about how often Chrome is used, details about the OS and Chrome version , Periodically ,
Requires advanced user intervention , Chrome previously was able to suggest similar pages when a page could not be found. For this, in some cases Google servers were contacted. The feature has since been removed.

Do Not Track

In February 2012, Google announced that Chrome would implement the

Do Not Track Do Not Track (DNT) is a formerly official HTTP header field, designed to allow internet users to opt-out of tracking by websites—which includes the collection of data regarding a user's activity across multiple distinct contexts, and the retent ...

(DNT) standard to inform websites the user's desire not to be tracked. The protocol was implemented in version 23. In line with the W3's draft standard for DNT, it is turned off by default in Chrome.

Stability

A multi-process architecture is implemented in Chrome where, by default, a separate process is allocated to each site instance and plugin. This procedure is termed

process isolation Process isolation is a set of different hardware and software technologies designed to protect each computer process, process from other processes on the operating system. It does so by preventing process A from writing to process B. Process isolat ...

, and raises security and stability by preventing tasks from interfering with each other. An attacker successfully gaining access to one application gains access to no others, and failure in one instance results in a ''Sad Tab''

screen of death In computing, a screen of death is an informal term for a type of computer operating system error message displayed onscreen when the system has experienced a fatal system error. Computer users have dubbed these messages "screens of death" because ...

, similar to the well-known '' Sad Mac'', but only one tab crashes instead of the whole application. This strategy exacts a fixed per-process cost up front, but results in less memory bloat over time as fragmentation is confined to each instance and no longer needs further memory allocations. This architecture was later adopted in Safari and Firefox. Chrome includes a process management utility called ''Task Manager'' which lets users see what sites and plugins are using the most

memory Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered ...

download In computer networks, download means to ''receive'' data from a remote system, typically a server such as a web server, an FTP server, an email server, or other similar system. This contrasts with uploading, where data is ''sent to'' a remote ...

ing the most

byte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...

s and overusing the CPU and provides the ability to terminate them. Chrome Version 23 ensures its users an improved battery life for the systems supporting Chrome's GPU accelerated video decoding.

Release channels, cycles and updates

The first production release on December 11, 2008 marked the end of the initial Beta test period and the beginning of production. Shortly thereafter, on January 8, 2009, Google announced an updated release system with three channels: Stable (corresponding to the traditional production), Beta, and Developer preview (also called the "Dev" channel). Where there were before only two channels: Beta and Developer, now there were three. Concurrently, all Developer channel users were moved to the Beta channel along with the promoted Developer release. Google explained that now the Developer channel builds would be less stable and polished than those from the initial Google Chrome's Beta period. Beta users could opt back to the Developer channel as desired. Each channel has its own release cycle and stability level. The Stable channel updated roughly quarterly, with features and fixes that passed "thorough" testing in the Beta channel. Beta updated roughly monthly, with "stable and complete" features migrated from the Developer channel. The Developer channel updated once or twice per week and was where ideas and features were first publicly exposed "(and sometimes fail) and can be very unstable at times". uoted remarks from Google's policy announcements.

On July 22, 2010, Google announced it would ramp up the speed at which it releases new stable versions; the release cycles were shortened from quarterly to six weeks for major Stable updates. Beta channel releases now come roughly at the same rate as Stable releases, though approximately one month in advance, while Dev channel releases appear roughly once or twice weekly, allowing time for basic release-critical testing. This faster release cycle also brought a fourth channel: the "Canary" channel, updated daily from a build produced at 09:00 UTC from the most stable of the last 40 revisions. The name refers to the practice of using canaries in coal mines, so if a change "kills" Chrome Canary, it will be blocked from migrating down to the Developer channel, at least until fixed in a subsequent Canary build. Canary is "the most bleeding-edge official version of Chrome and somewhat of a mix between Chrome dev and the Chromium snapshot builds". Canary releases run side by side with any other channel; it is not linked to the other Google Chrome installation and can therefore run different synchronization profiles, themes, and browser preferences. This ensures that fallback functionality remains even when some Canary updates may contain release-breaking bugs. It does not natively include the option to be the default browser, although on Windows and OS X it can be set through System Preferences. Canary was Windows-only at first; an OS X version was released on May 3, 2011. The Chrome beta channel for Android was launched on January 10, 2013; like Canary, it runs side by side with the stable channel for Android. Chrome Dev for Android was launched on April 29, 2015. All Chrome channels are automatically distributed according to their respective release cycles. The mechanism differs by platform. On Windows, it uses Google Update, and auto-update can be controlled via

Group Policy Group Policy is a feature of the Microsoft Windows NT family of operating systems (including Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows 11, and Windows Server 2003+) that controls the working environment of user accounts and computer accounts. G ...

. Alternatively, users may download a standalone installer of a version of Chrome that does not auto-update. On OS X, it uses Google Update Service, and auto-update can be controlled via the OS X "defaults" system. On Linux, it lets the system's normal

package management system A package manager or package-management system is a collection of software tools that automates the process of installing, upgrading, configuring, and removing computer programs for a computer in a consistent manner. A package manager deals w ...

supply the updates. This auto-updating behavior is a key difference from Chromium, the non-branded open-source browser which forms the core of Google Chrome. Because Chromium also serves as the pre-release development trunk for Chrome, its revisions are provided as source code and buildable snapshots are produced continuously with each new commit, requiring users to manage their own browser updates. In March 2021, Google announced that starting with Chrome 94 in the third quarter of 2021, Google Chrome Stable releases will be made every four weeks, instead of six weeks as they have been since 2010. Also, Google announced a new release channel for system administrators and browser embedders with releases every eight weeks.

Release version numbers

Releases are identified by a four-part version number, e.g. 42.0.2311.90 (Windows Stable release April 14, 2015). The components are major.minor.build.patch. : ''Major.minor'' reflects scheduling policy : ''Build.patch'' identifies content progression * ''Major'' represents a product release. These are scheduled 7–8 per year, unlike other software systems where the ''major'' version number updates only with substantial new content. * ''Minor'' is usually 0. References to version 'x' or 'x.0', e.g. 42.0, refer to this ''major.minor'' designation. * ''Build'' is ever increasing. For a release cycle, e.g. 42.0, there are several builds in the Canary and Developer period. The last ''build'' number from Developer is kept throughout Beta and Stable and is locked with the ''major.minor'' for that release. * ''Patch'' resets with each ''build'', incrementing with each ''patch''. The first ''patch'' is 0, but usually the first publicly released ''patch'' is somewhat higher. In Beta and Stable, only ''patch'' increments. Chromium and Chrome release schedules are linked through Chromium (''Major'') version

Branch Point In the mathematical field of complex analysis, a branch point of a multi-valued function (usually referred to as a "multifunction" in the context of complex analysis) is a point such that if the function is n-valued (has n values) at that point, ...

dates, published annually. The Branch Points precede the final Chrome Developer build (initial) release by 4 days (nearly always) and the Chrome Stable initial release by roughly 53 days. Example: The version 42 Branch Point was February 20, 2015. Developer builds stopped advancing at ''build'' 2311 with release 42.0.2311.4 on February 24, 4 days later. The first Stable release, 42.0.2311.90, was April 14, 2015, 53 days after the Branch Point.

Color management

Chrome supports

color management In digital imaging systems, color management (or colour management) is the controlled conversion between the color representations of various devices, such as image scanners, digital cameras, monitors, TV screens, film printers, computer printer ...

by using the system-provided ICC v2 and v4 support on

, and from version 22 supports ICC v2 profiles by default on other platforms.

''Dinosaur Game''

In Chrome, when not connected to the Internet and an error message displaying "No internet" is shown, on the top, an " 8-bit" ''

Tyrannosaurus rex ''Tyrannosaurus'' is a genus of large theropod dinosaur. The species ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' (''rex'' meaning "king" in Latin), often called ''T. rex'' or colloquially ''T-Rex'', is one of the best represented theropods. ''Tyrannosaurus'' live ...

'' is shown, but when pressing the space bar on a keyboard, mouse-clicking on it or tapping it on touch devices, the T-Rex instantly jumps once and dashes across a

cactus A cactus (, or less commonly, cactus) is a member of the plant family Cactaceae, a family comprising about 127 genera with some 1750 known species of the order Caryophyllales. The word ''cactus'' derives, through Latin, from the Ancient Gree ...

-ridden desert, revealing it to be an

Easter egg Easter eggs, also called Paschal eggs, are eggs that are decorated for the Christian feast of Easter, which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. As such, Easter eggs are common during the season of Eastertide (Easter season). The oldest tr ...

in the form of a

platform game A platform game (often simplified as platformer and sometimes called a jump 'n' run game) is a sub-genre of action video games in which the core objective is to move the player character between points in an environment. Platform games are charac ...

. The game itself is an infinite runner, and there is no time limit in the game as it progresses faster and periodically tints to a black background. A school

administrator can disable the game.

Platforms

The current version of Chrome runs on: *

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

or later * macOS 10.13 or later *

versions of

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All ...

14.04+, Debian 8+,

openSUSE openSUSE () is a free and open source RPM-based Linux distribution developed by the openSUSE project. The initial release of the community project was a beta version of SUSE Linux 10.0. Additionally the project creates a variety of tools, s ...

13.3+ and Fedora 24+ *

Android Nougat Android Nougat ( codenamed Android N during development) is the seventh major version and 14th original version of the Android operating system. First released as an alpha test version on March 9, 2016, it was officially released on August 22, ...

or later *

iOS 14 iOS 14 is the fourteenth major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc. for their iPhone and iPod Touch lines. Announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 22, 2020 as the successor to iOS 13 ...

or later , stable 32-bit and 64-bit builds are available for Windows, with only 64-bit stable builds available for Linux and

. 64-bit Windows builds became available in the developer channel and as canary builds on June 3, 2014, in the beta channel on July 30, 2014, and in the stable channel on August 26, 2014. 64-bit OS X builds became available as canary builds on November 7, 2013, in the beta channel on October 9, 2014, and in the stable channel on November 18, 2014. Starting with the release of version 89, Chrome will only be supported on

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

Intel x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was intr ...

and

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

processors with the

SSE3 SSE3, Streaming SIMD Extensions 3, also known by its Intel code name Prescott New Instructions (PNI), is the third iteration of the SSE instruction set for the IA-32 (x86) architecture. Intel introduced SSE3 in early 2004 with the Prescott revis ...

instruction set.

Android

A beta version for

devices was launched on February 7, 2012, available for a limited number of countries from

Google Play Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android operating sy ...

. Notable features: synchronization with desktop Chrome to provide the same bookmarks and view the same browser tabs,. page pre-rendering, hardware acceleration. Many of the latest HTML5 features: almost all of the Web Platform's features: GPU-accelerated canvas, including CSS 3D Transforms, CSS animations, SVG,

WebSocket WebSocket is a computer communications protocol, providing full-duplex communication channels over a single TCP connection. The WebSocket protocol was standardized by the IETF as in 2011. The current API specification allowing web applications ...

(including binary messages), Dedicated Workers; it has overflow scroll support, strong HTML5 video support, and new capabilities such as IndexedDB, WebWorkers, Application Cache and the File APIs, date- and time-pickers, parts of the Media Capture API. Also supports mobile oriented features such as Device Orientation and Geolocation. Mobile customizations: swipe gesture tab switching, link preview allows zooming in on (multiple) links to ensure the desired one is clicked, font size boosting to ensure readability regardless of the zoom level. Features missing in the mobile version include sandboxed tabs, Safe Browsing, apps or

extensions Extension, extend or extended may refer to: Mathematics Logic or set theory * Axiom of extensionality * Extensible cardinal * Extension (model theory) * Extension (predicate logic), the set of tuples of values that satisfy the predicate * E ...

, Adobe Flash (now and in the future),

Native Client Google Native Client (NaCl) is a discontinued sandboxing technology for running either a subset of Intel x86, ARM, or MIPS native code, or a portable executable, in a sandbox. It allows safely running native code from a web browser, independen ...

, and the ability to

export An export in international trade is a good produced in one country that is sold into another country or a service provided in one country for a national or resident of another country. The seller of such goods or the service provider is an ...

user data such a list of their opened tabs or their browsing history into

portable Portable may refer to: General * Portable building, a manufactured structure that is built off site and moved in upon completion of site and utility work * Portable classroom, a temporary building installed on the grounds of a school to provide ...

local files. Development changes: remote debugging, part of the browser layer has been implemented in Java, communicating with the rest of the Chromium and WebKit code through Java Native Bindings. The code of Chrome for Android is a fork of the Chromium project. It is a priority to upstream most new and modified code to Chromium and WebKit to resolve the fork. The April 17, 2012, update included availability in 31 additional languages and in all countries where Google Play is available. A desktop version of a website can also be requested as opposed to a mobile version. In addition, Android users can now add bookmarks to their Android home screens if they choose and decide which apps should handle links opened in Chrome. On June 27, 2012, Google Chrome for Android exited beta and became stable.. Chrome 18.0.1026311, released on September 26, 2012, was the first version of Chrome for Android to support mobile devices based on Intel x86. Starting from version 25, the Chrome version for Android is aligned with the desktop version, and usually new stable releases are available at the same time between the Android and the desktop version. Google released a separate Chrome for Android beta channel on January 10, 2013, with version 25. a separate beta version of Chrome is available in the Google Play Storeit can run side by side with the stable release.

iOS

Chrome is available on

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...

's mobile

operating system as ''Google Chrome for iOS''. Released in the

Apple App Store The App Store is an app store platform, developed and maintained by Apple Inc., for mobile apps on its iOS and iPadOS operating systems. The store allows users to browse and download approved apps developed within Apple's iOS Software Devel ...

on June 26, 2012, it supports the

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating ...

, iPhone, and iPod Touch, and the current version requires that the device has iOS 14.0 or greater installed. In accordance with Apple's requirements for browsers released through their App Store, this version of Chrome uses the ''iOS WebKit'' which is Apple's own mobile rendering engine and components, developed for their ''Safari'' browser therefore it is restricted from using Google's own V8 JavaScript engine. Chrome is the default web browser for the

''Gmail'' application. In a review by

Chitika Chitika, Inc. (''pronounced CHIH-tih-ka'') was a search-targeted advertising company. It was located in Westborough, Massachusetts, United States. The name Chitika means "in a snap" in Telugu language. On April 17, 2019, Chitika announced tha ...

, Chrome was noted as having 1.5% of the iOS web browser market . In October 2013, Chrome had 3% of the iOS browser market.

Linux

On Linux distributions, support for 32-bit Intel processors ended in March 2016 although Chromium is still supported. As of Chrome version 26, Linux installations of the browser may be updated only on systems that support GCC v4.6 and

GTK GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and propriet ...

v2.24 or later. Thus deprecated systems include (for example) Debian 6's 2.20, and

RHEL Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial open-source Linux distribution developed by Red Hat for the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop versio ...

6's 2.18.

Windows

Support for Google Chrome on

and

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

ended in April 2016. The last release of Google Chrome that can be run on Windows XP and Windows Vista was version 49.0.2623.112, released on April 7, 2016, then re-released on April 11, 2016. Support for Google Chrome on

was supposed to end upon the announcement on July 15, 2021, and suddenly moved to January 15, 2022, however due to the ongoing

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

and enterprises are taking more time to migrate to

or 11, the end of support date was pushed at least until January 15, 2023. , support for Windows 7, Windows 8 and 8.1 is slated to end in February 2023. "Windows 8 mode" was introduced in 2012 and has since been discontinued. It was provided to the developer channel, which enabled

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for download via MSDN and TechNet on August 15, 2012, and later to ...

and Windows 8.1 users to run Chrome with a full-screen, tablet-optimized interface, with access to snapping, sharing, and search functionalities. In October 2013, Windows 8 mode on the developer channel changed to use a desktop environment mimicking the interface of ChromeOS with a dedicated windowing system and taskbar for web apps. This was removed on version 49 and users that have upgraded to Windows 10 will lose this feature.

macOS

Google dropped support for

Mac OS X Leopard Mac OS X Leopard (version 10.5) is the sixth software versioning, major release of macOS, Apple Inc., Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Leopard was released on October 26, 2007 as the successor of Mac OS X Tig ...

with the release of Chrome 22. Support for 32-bit versions of Chrome ended in November 2014 with the release of Chrome 39. Support for

Mac OS X Snow Leopard Mac OS X Snow Leopard (version 10.6) is the seventh major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Snow Leopard was publicly unveiled on June 8, 2009 at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. ...

Mac OS X Lion OS X Lion, also known as Mac OS X Lion, (version 10.7) is the eighth major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Mac computers. A preview of OS X 10.7 Lion was publicly shown at the "Back to the Mac" Apple Speci ...

, and

OS X Mountain Lion OS X Mountain Lion (version 10.8) is the ninth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. OS X Mountain Lion was released on July 25, 2012, for purchase and download through Apple's Mac Ap ...

ended in April 2016 with the release of Chrome 50. Support for

OS X Mavericks OS X Mavericks (version 10.9) is the 10th major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. OS X Mavericks was announced on June 10, 2013, at WWDC 2013, and was released on October 22, 2013, wo ...

ended in April 2018 with the release of Chrome 66. Support for

OS X Yosemite OS X Yosemite ( ; version 10.10) is the eleventh major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. OS X Yosemite was announced and released to developers on June 2, 2014, at WWDC 2014 and rel ...

ended in January 2021 with the release of Chrome 88. Support for

OS X El Capitan OS X El Capitan ( ) () is the twelfth major release of macOS (named OS X at the time of El Capitan's release), Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh. It focuses mainly on performance, stability, and security. Followin ...

and macOS Sierra ended in August 2022 with the release of Chrome 104.

ChromeOS

Google Chrome is the basis of Google's

operating system that ships on specific hardware from Google's manufacturing partners. The user interface has a minimalist design resembling the Google Chrome browser. ChromeOS is aimed at users who spend most of their computer time on the Web; the only applications on the devices are a browser incorporating a media player and a

file manager A file manager or file browser is a computer program that provides a user interface to manage files and folders. The most common operations performed on files or groups of files include creating, opening (e.g. viewing, playing, editing or pr ...

. Google announced ChromeOS on July 7, 2009.

Reception

Google Chrome was met with acclaim upon release. In 2008, Matthew Moore of ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'' summarized the verdict of early reviewers: "Google Chrome is attractive, fast and has some impressive new features..." Initially, Microsoft reportedly played down the threat from Chrome and predicted that most people would embrace

Opera Software Opera is a Norwegian multinational technology company and subsidiary of Kunlun that specializes in web browser development, fintech, as well as services such as Opera News and YoYo Games. The company's total user base, including users of its ...

said that "Chrome will strengthen the Web as the biggest application platform in the world". But by February 25, 2010, ''BusinessWeek'' had reported that "For the first time in years, energy and resources are being poured into browsers, the ubiquitous programs for accessing content on the Web. Credit for this trenda boon to consumersgoes to two parties. The first is Google, whose big plans for the Chrome browser have shaken Microsoft out of its competitive torpor and forced the software giant to pay fresh attention to its own browser, Internet Explorer. Microsoft all but ceased efforts to enhance IE after it triumphed in the last browser war, sending Netscape to its doom. Now it's back in gear." Mozilla said that Chrome's introduction into the web browser market comes as "no real surprise", that "Chrome is not aimed at competing with Firefox", and furthermore that it would not affect Google's revenue relationship with Mozilla. With its dominance in the web browser market, Google has been accused of using Chrome and Blink development to push new web standards that are proposed in-house by Google and subsequently implemented by its services first and foremost. These have led to performance disadvantages and compatibility issues with competing browsers, and in some cases, developers intentionally refusing to test their websites on any other browser than Chrome. Tom Warren of ''The Verge'' went as far as comparing Chrome to

Internet Explorer 6 Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) is a graphical web browser developed by Microsoft for Windows operating systems. Released on August 24, 2001, it is the sixth, and by now discontinued, version of Internet Explorer and the successor to Internet ...

, the default browser of

that was often targeted by competitors due to its similar ubiquity in the early 2000s. In 2019, Google similarly faced criticism over planned changes to its extensions API for Chrome (dubbed "Manifest V3"), which would inhibit the effectiveness of certain forms of

software by preventing the use of the WebRequest

to block and modify network connections. Google intends extensions to transition to another API known as DeclarativeWebRequest, which allows the extension to set up pre-configured rules that are processed by the browser itself rather than through the extension. However, concerns over how well the API would perform, in combination with concerns over a cap on the number of entries that may be blacklisted, led to criticism that these changes were designed to inhibit ad blocking (citing Google's vested interest in the online advertising industry). Google cited performance issues associated with WebRequest, as it requires all network traffic to go through the extension before the page is loaded, as well as its use in malicious extensions, as justification for these changes. In June 2019, it announced that it would increase the aforementioned cap from 30,000 to 150,000 entries to help quell concerns.

Usage

Market share

Chrome overtook

in November 2011, in worldwide usage. , according to StatCounter, Google Chrome had 67% worldwide desktop usage share, making it the most widely used web browser. Along with Safari and Mozilla Firefox, Chrome receives a weekend "bump", which boosts its market share by as much as three percentage points on weekends, at the expense of

. It was reported by StatCounter, a web analytics company, that for the single day of Sunday, March 18, 2012, Chrome was the most used web browser in the world for the first time. Chrome secured 32.7% of the global web browsing on that day, while Internet Explorer followed closely behind with 32.5%. From May 14–21, 2012, Google Chrome was for the first time responsible for more Internet traffic than Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which long had held its spot as the most used web browser in the world. According to StatCounter, 31.88% of web traffic was generated by Chrome for a sustained period of one week and 31.47% by Internet Explorer. Though Chrome had topped Internet Explorer for a single day's usage in the past, this was the first time it had led for one full week. At the 2012 Google I/O developers' conference, Google claimed that there were 310 million active users of Chrome, almost double the number in 2011, which was stated as 160 million active users. In June 2013, according to StatCounter, Chrome overtook Internet Explorer for the first time in the US. In August 2013, Chrome was used by 43% of internet users worldwide. This study was done by Statista, which also noted that in North America, 36% of people use Chrome, the lowest in the world. , Chrome is the most used browser in every country.

Enterprise deployment

In December 2010, Google announced that to make it easier for businesses to use Chrome they would provide an official Chrome MSI package. For business use it is helpful to have full-fledged MSI packages that can be customized via transform files (.mst)but the MSI provided with Chrome is only a very limited

MSI wrapper Windows Installer (msiexec.exe, previously known as Microsoft Installer, codename Darwin) is a software component and application programming interface (API) of Microsoft Windows used for the installation, maintenance, and removal of software ...

fitted around the normal installer, and many businesses find that this arrangement does not meet their needs. The normal downloaded Chrome installer puts the browser in the user's local app data directory and provides invisible background updates, but the MSI package will allow installation at the system level, providing system administrators control over the update processit was formerly possible only when Chrome was installed using

Google Pack Google Pack was a collection of software tools offered by Google to download in a single archive. It was announced at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show, on January 6. Google Pack was only available for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. ...

. Google also created group policy objects to fine-tune the behavior of Chrome in the business environment, for example by setting automatic updates intervals, disabling auto-updates, and configuring a home page. Until version 24 the software is known not to be ready for enterprise deployments with roaming profiles or Terminal Server/Citrix environments. In 2010, Google first started supporting Chrome in enterprise environments by providing an MSI wrapper around the Chrome installer. Google starting providing group policy objects, with more added each release, and today there are more than 500 policies available to control Chrome's behavior in enterprise environments. In 2016, Google launched Chrome Browser Enterprise Support, a paid service enabling IT admins access to Google experts to support their browser deployment. In 2019, Google launched ''Chrome Browser Cloud Management'', a dashboard that gives business IT managers the ability to control content accessibility, app usage and browser extensions installed on its deployed computers.

Chromium

In September 2008, Google released a large portion of Chrome's source code as an open-source project called Chromium. This move enabled third-party developers to study the underlying source code and to help port the browser to the

and

operating systems. The Google-authored portion of Chromium is released under the permissive

BSD license BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lice ...

. Other portions of the source code are subject to a variety of open-source licenses. Chromium is similar to Chrome, but lacks built-in automatic updates and a built-in Flash player, as well as Google branding and has a blue-colored logo instead of the multicolored Google logo. Chromium does not implement user RLZ tracking. Initially, the Google Chrome PDF viewer, PDFium, was excluded from Chromium, but was later made open-source in May 2014. PDFium can be used to fill PDF forms.

Developing for Chrome

It is possible to develop applications, extensions, and themes for Chrome. They are zipped in a .crx file and contain a manifest.json file that specifies basic information (such as version, name, description, privileges, etc.), and other files for the user interface (icons, popups, etc.). Google has an official developer's guide on how to create, develop, and publish projects. Chrome has its own web store where users and developers can upload and download these applications and extensions.

Impersonation by malware

As with

Microsoft Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems (in W ...

, the popularity of Google Chrome has led to the appearance of malware abusing its name. In late 2015, an

adware Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue for its developer by automatically generating online advertisements in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the ...

replica of Chrome named "eFast" appeared, which would usurp the Google Chrome installation and hijack file type associations to make shortcuts for common file types and

communication protocol A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any kind of variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics and synchroniza ...

s link to itself, and inject advertisements into web pages. Its similar-looking icon was intended to deceive users.

Notes

References

External links

* {{authority control 2008 software Android web browsers C++ software Cloud clients Companies' terms of service Computer-related introductions in 2008 Cross-platform web browsers Embedded Linux Freeware Web browsers Chrome, Google IOS web browsers Linux web browsers MacOS web browsers Portable software Proprietary cross-platform software Site-specific browsing Software based on WebKit Software that uses FFmpeg Web browsers that use GTK Windows web browsers