If you haven’t heard yet, you’ve probably not been on the internet lately. Word is (links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) that today Google will finally announce the anticipated Google Browser, GBrowser, Google Chrome (link not yet active).
According to a number of sources, Google Chrome is based on the open source Webkit Project, which is the same engine used by a number of Apple products including Safari and Mail. The question here is why? They are already pretty tight with the Firefox team, why not use the Gecko engine used by Firefox, Thunderbird, Nvu, and others? Is the Gecko market too crowded? Did the Apple board of directors push Google CEO Eric Schmidt towards webkit?
The same thing could be asked of another product, why webkit and why not Presto? Presto is the engine used by the speedy Opera Web Browser and Adobe Dreamweaver. Of course, Webkit and Gecko offer one advantage here; cost. Though I said it before, and I’ll say it again, Opera’s mail client, M2 would be the perfect GMail Desktop Client. The two are practically identical.
Presto, Gecko, Webkit. It doesn’t really matter, what matters is Google is finally going to release a web browser.
What can we expect from Google Chrome? For that, I’d have to point you to Blogoscoped.com who first broke the news and now has some images of the browser. Let the countdown begin…