Google Chrome, the Comic

EDIT: So apparently there's a lot of controversy going around about Chrome's EULA. In it, there's a simple sentence that says:

“…By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services…”

In simple terms, it means that anything you post, publish, e-mail, blog, or create while using Chrome will automatically belong to Google. Scary, huh? So scary, in fact they banned us from using Chrome at work until a modified EULA is made (since we post a lot of stuff on our intranet website).

I guess this means that Google owns the rest of my post below (but not this edit, heh).

END EDIT.


Today Google is releasing their much awaited (although I hadn't heard about it until this weekend) open-source web browser called Chrome. In order to introduce it, they created a 38-page online comic book (drawn by Scott McCloud) explaining the back-end of how Chrome works, and why it's efficient and faster than most other web browsers. It's actually quite informative (if you read through the whole thing).

I thought the introduction of something technical via means of comics and illustrations was pretty neat in trying to explain concepts to the masses. Sure, they could've done screenshots and written globs and globs of boring documentation, but most people would just skim over it (like EULAs) and take for granted the fact that it's working. In the comic, Google employees (in all their monochrome 2D glory, somewhat reminiscent of Chris Ware's stuff) explain the problems of current web browsers and how they go about fixing those problems.

Comics and art aside, you should really try Chrome. It's quite fast and not much clutter. Also, the fact that they even have an "Incognito Mode" (a.k.a. "pornsurfing mode") shows that they are in touch with the needs of today's internet junkies.