I love this: "Over the last few months, we've been working with the IE engineers at Microsoft to address these issues: they released a critical update to their JavaScript implementation that fixed a performance problem with how the script engine allocates and frees memory." - Paul Buchheit
Perhaps Google won't bother addressing these challenges in future, and instead tailor everything for Chrome? - Slippy Lane
No, things will have to work with ie6 for a long time, but what they can do is make some of the enhanced features be Chrome-only (things that aren't possible in other browsers). - Paul Buchheit
That's probably a much fairer assessment, given your exposure to the aforementioned, lol. In that case, then, I suppose it's up to the boys and girls at Microsoft and Mozilla to take advantage of the opportunity and get in on the action. I imagine they're already studying the guts of chrome as hard as they can :-) - Slippy Lane
Hopefully, we'll never see "to get this cool feature in Gmail, install Chrome". A plug-in like Gears is a reasonable requirement, though. - Ionut
I wonder if that IE fix addresses the problems we've been having. Does anybody know the KB article for it? - Gabe Schaffer
What is the issue Gabe? I believe the problem they fixed was with GC performance once there were a large number of objects. - Paul Buchheit
Paul: The problem is that after running for some time the app just becomes untenably slow. Our hypothesis was that the GC would run a collection on every allocation once there got to be too many objects, and we were exceeding that limit. I seem to recall you were quite skeptical at the time, Paul, because Gmail hadn't run into that problem. - Gabe Schaffer
"Can the super-rich former governor of Massachusetts — the son of a Fortune 500 C.E.O. who made a vast fortune in the leveraged-buyout business — really keep a straight face while denouncing “Eastern elites”?" - Jim Norris via Bookmarklet
Every four years, this awful American anti-intellectualism rears its head and makes me sad and frustrated. Ugh. - Jennie Lin
What Jennie said! Having talked with friends in many other countries (admittedly mostly Europe), I haven't found any other countries with a massive number of idiots^H voters so obsessed over perceived elitism, intellectualism, and -- add to this -- community organizing. - Adam Lasnik
Hush about those useless community organizers! Get a load of what Bush Sr. said about them in his Inaugural Address. http://chrisbaskind.com/2008/0... - AJ Kohn
Adam, it is not a purely American attitude. Anti-intellectualism is rampant everywhere I have lived. In Australia (and other Commonwealth countries) it rears its head in the guise of the Tall Poppy Syndrome. In Scandinavia they have 'Janteloven'. UK class, elitism and intellectualism are also a bit part of society. Boris Johnson anyone? An 'educated' accent is looked upon with distrust, whilst the 'Little Aussie Battler' is the ideal. - Patricia Hanrahan
"Last month went by pretty quickly, didn't it? One month is not a very long time, but the fact of the matter is that the life expectancy (in the United States) is only about 936 months. Life sure looks different to me when I can see my whole life displayed before me as 936 little blobs." - ⓞnor via Bookmarklet
936 is a pretty big number though, when used to count big things like months. - Alex Mendes da Costa
I figure I have about 40 years left, and I'm starting to look at 40 1-year projects... what should they be? what would be the most impactful? the most useful to the world? running for political office, McCain's speech aside, is NOT one of them!!! - Justin Long
Well, that would depend on what you're good at... - ⓞnor
...and what you want to become good at. - Kevin Fox
I formally object to the inclusion of the "Shannon the Super-dork" picture. I also move to burn all photos from that year of my life :) - Shannon Jiménez
Thanks for sharing Sheila! Lots of great memories come to mind...Jim was a special person. :) So geniuine. And, Shannon...from an aunties point of view you were adorable in that pic. - Skye Miller
Interestig to see how adding DOM operations evens out John's benchmarks (first has DOM ops and Safari beats Chrome, second is Google's apparently slightly biased benchmark, which relies heavily on recursion). - Bret Taylor via Bookmarklet
It is time to optimize for DOM. Faster JavaScript is fantastic..... great for games and crypto.... but what about the real world? NOTE: Ray Cromwell's Chronoscope benchmark http://timepedia.blogspot.com/... - Dion Almaer
yeah i made the point on DOM to the V8 team http://tinyurl.com/65clg2 - never got back to me on that one say maybe some truth to it :) - weblivz via twhirl
These tests are very insightful. I was initially very excited about Chrome being 10 times faster on javascript. As usual with any such claims (not just from Google), they are skewed. However, I do think that Chrome entering the market will cause all browsers to get better more rapidly. Competition does drive innovation. - Robert Felty
Thanks for sharing this detailed knowledge. Very useful. - Edwin Khodabakchian
we're working on DOM work now. believe that the tracing technique has applications; working on getting the DOM acting faster soon. - John Lilly
granted all beta-quality of Chrome and zero-day securiity bug, i think their current *speed* shows only lack of exception handling. Once it matures, it will be same or evenn worse than FF - it is tough to beat long-standing code without rounding corners on usual code glue... - silpol
I must get a digital copy of both Yes Minister + Yes Prime Minister, I still have a VHS set of both series - Duncan Riley
It's pretty amazing (and depressing) how timeless the two series are. - Simon
Ah! One of the most brilliant of Britcoms. Timeless. I own both YM and YPM on DVD and watch all of the episodes every 6 months are so. Though they have a 80's quality in terms of production values, the ideas espoused are classic. - Sudhakar Chandra
The books have even more humor in the form of editor's notes. - sridhars
Most coveted job title on Earth right now, huh? So, now you're on the squad, what's the minimum bribe to get you gushing forth to the guys on the merits of being able to tag our own (or each others) posts? - Slippy Lane
Congratulations!! Smart move by FriendFeed. :) - felix
Jay: she did the Mac icons, didn't she? That is so cool! I wonder if your home is neat and tidy too. - Robert Scoble
These gift are absolutely the stupidest thing ( though obviously not for Facebook). What reasonably intelligent person would pay money to give these "gifts"? - Brian Sullivan
Brian, what kind of person would buy a diamond or other fundamentally worthless token? - Paul Buchheit
Robert: Yup. Susan was the first bit twiddler/pixel pusher. Little known fact: she also did the icons for windows 3.1 (and the solitaire deck) and OS2 for IBM. - Jay Tannenbaum
Susan Kare is your bride? Congrats! I can just picture the beautiful icons on the wedding favors. :-) - Kevin Fox
So this is the viable bussiness model to sell virtual gifts - Goofy2
greeaat news for all involved. congrsts. - Alex Gawley
Congrats Ben! I could see that coming at some point - Dobromir Hadzhiev
Congratulations! I knew it was coming when I noticed you'd been making changes and even had a FF email address... and there was no denial: http://beta.friendfeed.com/e/5... - Tony Ruscoe
This is recognition for his great work! Congrats! - Winston Teo
Great chart. Seems good to pass around. Which bracket are you in? Who will take more of your money? - Chris Wetherell
Sorry, but McCain's proposal seems immoral. 4.4% cut for those who make over $2.87M a year? Wow. Here's the original WashPost article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/... - Jeff Eddings
Hmm. Pretty difficult to prove immorality in a tax plan. :) How about instead just calling McCain's current tax plan less sound? If this comparison is correct, then it looks like Obama's plan raises more revenue than the JM plan while giving a bigger break to all families making less than $100,000/year. Been wondering what evidence supports the theory undergirding the McCain proposal that "less riches for the rich == less jobs == less opportunity" since it's counter-intuitive to me. I'd prefer the US give Obama's plan a try. - Chris Wetherell
"Brian Rakowski walks to the whiteboard in a small conference room in Building 41 on Google's Mountain View campus. A lanky, gregarious man in his twenties, Rakowski is the product manager of a top-secret project that's been under way for more than two years." - Bret Taylor via Bookmarklet
Congrats on the great article, Brian. - Bret Taylor
@john: alleyinsider is the last source i will trust as to whether it is going or not going to happen. But, really, as @slippy says, choice FTW! The rest will just pan out. - Ashwin Bharambe
That picture is great. It looks like a band photo. - Andrew Burd
Internets are the new rock'n'roll, Andrew, didn't you hear? - Slippy Lane
The photographer, Joe Pugliese, has a great website: http://www.joepug.com/ In fact it's so great I haven't got round to reading the Wired article yet - Adewale Oshineye
Enjoyable read except for this completely bizarre paragraph -- "Not long after that, Brin and Page came by to check in on the furtive beginnings of their browser. "I remember sitting at my desk, which at the time had a stuffed snake running along the back of it," says Pam Greene, an engineer on the team. "Sergey was bouncing on one of those exercise balls, watching Darin give a demo, and petting the snake." - Osi
"The snake, called Mr. Bigglesworth, seemed to purr softly in Sergey's lap, providing a calming influence during the demo. However, when one of the tabs crashed, taking the browser with it, Sergey's voice took a more strident turn. "I have gathered here before me the world's best developers," Sergey began, "and yet each of you has failed to kill Internet Explorer. That makes me angry. And when Sergey gets angry, Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset. And when Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset, people die!" - Karim
Sergey then pressed a nearby console button that retracted Darin's chair into the floor below. A flash of flame could be seen as the screaming developer vanished from the conference room. - Karim
Somebody help me!" Darin pleads. "I'm alive, only very badly burned!" This proves to be very distracting, and after being interrupted several times, Sergey picks up his phone, and reports the situation to a henchman. "I'll go deal with it," he assures Sergey. "If someone opens the retrieval hatch, I can get out," Darin explains. At this point, the hatch opens. Darin is at first grateful, but then a gunshot is heard. - Geoff Longman
After a pause, Sergey is satisfied Darin is dead and attempts to continue explaining his plan, only be interrupted by Darin again, who says indignantly "you shot me! You shot me right in the arm! Why did you-". Darin sentence is cut short by a second gunshot, which proves to be the end for him, as the hatch is heard to close. (http://www.moviedeaths.com/aus...) - Geoff Longman
Google’s Chrome is aimed at Windows, not IE
This is no longer about browser but about the an entire marketplace spread between desktop, mobile and web. With Chrome, Google’s taking a shot at Windows, not paltry Internet Explorer
I’ve covered this in more detail on my blog
http://sachendra.wordpress.com... - Sachendra
The point of Chrome is the same point one would make about the iPhone. Will iPhone outsell Nokia worlwide in total number of phones sold? Not a chance in hell! Has it changed the face of mobile phones forever...absolutely. This is where I think Chrome is a fantastic concept. By open sourcing D8 Google has literally empowered every other browser including Safari and Firefox to be Windows beaters. In actual fact IE may even implemented their own canibalised V8 to canibalise their Microsofts existing fat client business. If you ask me, Google is the master of judo in this case. google 2 MSFT 0 - John Kotsaftis via feedalizr
I haven't been able to find many details about the V8 design, but it's apparently a straight JIT (no interpreter) with inline caching of property accessors. I didn't see anything about HotSpot/TraceMonkey-style optimizing compilation, and it doesn't seem to use any intermediate language. (http://code.google.com/apis/v8...) Is this the future of dynamic language runtimes? Am I a nerd? - Jim Norris
Nice to see Wired putting out a great article in a timely manner for a change - rather than spend page upon page talking about minor internet celebs and how they gatecrashed gawker media parties to build their fame. - Jonathan Beckett
Jim, tracemonkey should still be faster. Paul friendfeeded an article comparing them. I should say that tracemonkey will still be faster eventually, unless V8 adds hotspot-like tracing as well, in which case, my money would ride on V8, since Google probably has half of the hotspot team :) - Sanjeev Singh
Matt, I think your commitment to being out front and transparent with users is awesome. You are a busy guy, but we on the outside appreciate you taking the time to address stuff in a clear way that doesn't reek of PR disinfectants. - Sacca
I think when Gmail was first introduced there was a simlar disclaimer-like line in terms mentioning that Google reserved itself a right to screen all emails to and fro the user registered with it. There were even an article or two crying foul on Gmail censorship. See how we all got used to it now and never even remember :) - Hayk Hakobyan
Thanks, Sacca. It's weird because I consciously don't want to be a Google fanboy, but Chrome just rocks so hard that it's difficult to stay neutral. It's just really exciting to share one of Google's greatest long-time secrets with the world today. - Matt Cutts
"the prevailing mentality [...] has been to focus on isolated discoveries by single teams and interpret research experiments in isolation. An increasing number of questions have at least one study claiming a research finding, and this receives unilateral attention. The probability that at least one study, among several done on the same question, claims a statistically significant research finding is easy to estimate." - Simon via Bookmarklet
Essentially, on average 1 out of 20 times you'll be able to claim something is statistically significant at the 95% level even if it is not. So if 20 teams do the same experiment with a non-existent effect, it's quite likely one of the teams will obtain statistically significant results, and that team will receive all the attention. - Simon
How did you find this? I was about to friendfeed it after reading about the study in Edward Tufte's "Beautiful Evidence" :) - Sanjeev Singh
A friend of mine (MarkP) placed a copy of the paper on my desk :) - Simon
it was also on Norman Swan's Health Report program on Radio National in Australia - a program I quite like. - A Puri
I think it's the industry's best chance to topple IE. - l0ckergn0me
I'd love to take it for a spin. Is there an ETA for the public release yet? - Ray Metzen
I read the comic book twice, and despite my Safari leanings, I think this one has legs. Question is... if iPhone trumps Android, does Google port it to the iPhone? - Louis Gray
That's not the point. I use Firefox, and want to know why Google, which has a good relationship with Mozilla (apparently) chose to go the Not Invented Here route, when there was an established open source platform to work with. The only thing I can think of is that this is to get a good mobile browser since webkit has proven itself on the iphone. - Deepak
Please let Google release it as an app for the iPhone with Gears, Flash and Java enabled. And please let Apple let them do that! - Tony Ruscoe
I'm still curious about the firefox usage aggrigation project mentioned in the first half of the year, had a techcrunch article but has gone strangely quiet ever since. Some are claiming it'll cover only interface stats and others actual traffic data. - alphaxion
first release will be sep-02. it now seems clear that APIs like safebrowsing [http://bit.ly/3QvWL7] and gears [http://bit.ly/4amra2] were all part of a longer-term strategy to change the game for their app set. - MikeAmundsen
Deepak, the most logical explanation seems to be that Google wants to take Chrome in a direction where Mozilla doesn't want to go. What exactly that is remains to be seen when the thing is released... -
