Chrome has a Little Shine, but is not Ready for Enterprise Use

Google, Inc. recently introduced a new Web browser to the marketplace. The browser, labeled "Chrome", has gotten a great deal of attention and almost overnight claimed over one percent of the Web browser market. While the browser has a very good fundamental architecture, major security holes and overall immaturity should convince IT executives against its early adoption.

Focal Points:

• Google introduced its new "Chrome" browser to the market this week. The product is still in early beta, yet it has already garnered over a percent share of the Web browser market. From an IT perspective, the product has many concepts that have a great deal of appeal. First, the browser is completely open source, which prevents Google from exerting a "forced" monopoly on its product in the way Microsoft Corp. can with Internet Explorer with its tight coupling to the operating system. Second, the product is based on open standards, using the WebKit that is the core of Apple, Inc.'s Safari browser. This will encourage broader application development and interoperability.
• From a technical perspective, Chrome has an architecture that is designed to isolate individual tabs, so that any one tab that has a problem will not bring down all browsers, as is usually the case with other browsers today. This segmentation will increase up front memory requirements, since the cost of this isolation is some process duplication. However, a tighter design will minimize memory leaks, and when one tab is closed all the memory is completely freed to the system. Google engineers designed their own Java rendering engine, called V8, which run two to four times faster than Mozilla, Inc.'s Firefox and Internet Explorer respectively. The browser is multi-threaded, and the tab isolation adds security, with each tab being "sand boxed" from the operating system. This means that even if a hacker compromises a tab, it "theoretically" cannot directly expose the system that runs it.
• With all the marketing exposure and strong technology to support it, Chrome has some serious shortcomings which Experton Group suggests make it a poor candidate today for use by the enterprise. First, the product is only recently introduced, which means many more enhancements need to be made. The first admitted shortcoming is the lack of bookmark management, as well as no good way to handle advanced features many users want, such as managing really simple syndication (RSS) feeds. A more significant shortcoming is the major security vulnerabilities that were found after only the first day of testing. One flaw makes is very easy to have an error in one Web page that does, in fact, close the entire Chrome process. The second problem is an exposure hackers found that can enable remote execution of code to occur, which is a major security deficiency.

Experton Group believes Chrome is an exciting new browser that will generate a great deal of excitement in the market, changing the way all vendors look at building Web application interfaces.  Debates will swirl in the market over whether Chrome will steal market share from IE, Firefox, or both. This issue early on will be of little concern to the enterprise, since the product is still too early for broad adoption. However, the fundamental open design and independent process architecture will be something enterprise will want to design their applications for, and one that other vendors are likely to move to. Firefox will move this way before IE, since it will be much easier for them to adapt this change. IT executives should not move to Chrome now, but review the overall design, understand its implications, and use this client concept as a model for SOA interfaces.