Considering IE 8 is relatively new, and Chrome is brand new and not closed to being done yet, and fierce competition is driving function quickly at the expense of maturity, I guess some bloat is expected. But all that aside, you made a very insightful observation:

"Firefox is a browser, it doesn't aspire to be something else (except with a few plug-ins). Google and Microsoft aspire to have Chrome and IE 8 be much more than browsers. Both products are part of broader application strategies. They want to be more, but demand more, too."

Exactly 100% on target! Microsoft and Google see the browser as only for yesterday's web servers, while they see IE 8 + Silverlight and Chrome as "thin" clients that can access remote applications but with local client feel, function, and capabilities. However, all previous attempts at "thin" clients seem to end up with fat clients. Because device management, color management, font management, user interaction, and the like all have to take place no matter if it's Windows+Word, Linux+OOo, or Windows+Chrome+GoogleDocs.

Their is a debate on whether or not Chrome can be referred to as OS or as having an embedded OS. I think the lines are blurry and getting blurrier all the time. If you are running Linux with a virtualization environment with Windows running a Java JVM running a Java application, where is the OS?

If you say "Linux", then what's Windows? It still is what it is no matter if it's running natively on a real machine or the "bare metal" or running within a virtual machine. I don't think it changes when, from its point of view, nothing has changed (except perhaps for a few differences in loaded drivers).

And is the JVM an operating system? Some are extended to run directly on the real machine and hence implement the function of a real OS.

Even the X clients so popular 20 years ago needed a capable monitor, a keyboard and a mouse, a serious network interface to handle the chatty X protocol, a serious CPU and RAM configuration to handle the X server's own demands. And then all that run-time support usually required a disk driver to support it (or better, a network boot capability). They really were the Macbook Air of their day: everything a PC needs except for access to local storage and local removable media. Thin they weren't, and even Macbook Air is physically thin but still functionally fat.

My point is that all these environments (Linux, Windows, the JVM, the thin X client machine) all provide run-time environments that provide for their hosted applications a consistent and abstracted view of what's just below them. It doesn't really matter what you call it anymore. But it's important to realize that all of these environments have to implement those abstractions, and "thin client" ends up being a description of the overall system design and how resources are apportioned. It's just that "thin client" no longer accurately reflects the size of the client.

They claim that Chrome is optimised for opening and closing lots of javascript intensive tabs. The claim their garbage collection is much better so will fare better with lots of tabs over a longer period. If you had used the Chrome task manager then you could have only killed the offending tab without killing the entire browser.

Also I think that IE uses a lot of common libraries and systems which are not included in its process memory total.

Much more important than total memory usage is rendering speed and responsiveness. In my unscientific tests, I find that IE is very slow and bloated.

The Gecko Runtime, XUL language, XPCOM and Xulrunner all aspire to be much much more than a browser (moreso than Chrome - XPCOM makes plain javascript and Google Gears look like childrens toys). They have existed for years but are arguably non-standard, complicated and before their time. The power of Firefox's extensions comes from XUL and XPCOM, they are just as powerful as any application. The same runtime that runs Firefox runs Thunderbird and many other applications.

@Philosopher - My webserver runs PHP, does that mean Apache is an operating system? MS Office runs VB script and can be used to make applications, does that make it an OS?

"If you are running Linux with a virtualization environment with Windows running a Java JVM running a Java application, where is the OS?"

Linux and Windows are operating systems. VMWare is essentially just an X86 emulator, which is software running on an OS. Windows is talking to the fake hardware because operating systems talk to hardware. If the JVM or the virtualization software is running directly on the hardware 'without an OS' then it is an OS, but I think you will find that the JVM is actually Linux tied to a JVM but sold as 'without needing an OS'. I know thats what VMWare do.

Even X clients need an operating system. Unix normally.

@billybob,
Thanks for the insights and great explanations.

Is Apache an operating system? Well, an operating system generally runs applications. The Java JVM world uses the terms "applets" for client Java applications, and "servlets" for server-based hosted applications. So can the hosting body (local JVM or web server with JVM) an "operating systemlet"? And if you change the language from Java to PHP, does Apache's similar role make it also an "operating systemlet"? But as I said before, I am not too hung up on the terminology. The only thing that is really important is an unambiguous and readily-understood description of the design.

To stray off the point a little: The Java language has attracted its share of bozos (not the fault of the language) and people who walked within 10 feet of a running JVM would put Java on their resumes. One person in my group lamented the use of Java to create poorly implemented servlets for never-to-be-released products for the sole purpose of padding the programmer's resume, and coined the term "joblet".

But back to IE 8 and Chrome, I think that Microsoft would have never put the effort into XP, 2000, 2003, 2008, and Vista if it weren't for the steady march of Linux. And Chrome raises the bar to IE 8, hoping to provide a similar experience but one that is not tied to Microsoft's cloud. And so competition is a good thing, but too much haste yields bloat and bugs. It remains to be seen if Google's approach to opening up Chrome's development, not only the code but also the code reviews, build logs, and bug lists, will give them an advantage in the long run. I am hopeful the model works, not for Google's sake specifically, for for freedom's sake generally.

TaskMan is not a good measure of anything by itself. You need to look at what's shared, what's private, IO, handles etc.

I don't know about Chrome being a Container of applications, but so far chrome is not even a bare minimum browser, since it lacks significant features. Making Chrome a client side container like IE did with COM/ActiveX/NET/ or Silverlight is not a simple task and so far I have seen nothing from Google in that direction. In a few words, Google has a long way ahead, unless if it buys that capability.

Well, it looks like the Browser Wars are not yet over. While Chrome and IE are still beta's, the real battle for your hard earned bucks maybe still going with Firefox. Consider that firefox comes on this laptop;

Sub-$100 Laptops Have Finally Arrived

Quotes; "Overall it looks pretty good. MIPS based processor, WiFi, 1GB flash storage, it runs Linux, has 3 USB ports, Ethernet, SDHC card reader, audio in and out, multi-tabbed Firefox browser support and Abiword for word processing. Running a custom Chinese Linux distrubution named Xip. They say they have refined the manufacturing process and have learned from building this laptop how to mass produce a laptop that will sell for $98.00."

link for above;

http://mobile.slashdot.org/mobile/08/09/04/2232225.shtml

A nicely researched article, and something different to talk about.

I personally would be dubious of any "free" software provided by a company so dependent on the revenue of advertising.

We've seen this type of "free" software many times in the past, as best its full of bugs and security holes, at worst it just simply adds more bloat to the already existing rubbish and is mostly un-functional.

There will always be people who are sold on these type of ideas, but for once, I dont believe MS have much of a longterm rival here nor much to worry about.

I for one wont be letting chrome anywhere near my system, and from the people Ive spoken with, neither will they.

Goblin - You are a classic case of not understanding the difference between free and libre (or not appearing to). The free software you have seen in the past is free but not libre. Chrome is open source so it is totally trustworthy because it is transparent.

Please Google for (or Live for) 'free vs libre' and 'free beer vs free speech', the English language is not expressive enough with just free.

@billybob:
"Also I think that IE uses a lot of common libraries and systems which are not included in its process memory total."

What on earth are you talking about? A process can't hide the amount of memory it allocates. It doesn't matter if the the memory allocation is done with method calls in the main process or included libraries. Please don't spread such lies and assumptions since you have no clue what you are talking about.

Have you never used FireFox? Leave that puppy running and it consumes memory like no other. v2 and v3 especially.

I've had it consume over 800MB of memory, on different machines in different environments! So much so that it affects the machine's performance.

I use ALL the borwsers (I have to - I'm a developer). I really dont get the Firefox bandwagon!? Its really not that great - and it's market share outside the community that thinks its the best thing since sliced bread is tiny, so it doesnt even have a great business case either!

For a very simple extreme case of 'hiding memory':

A process downloads lots zipped data, produces stats and then displays the results. Normally this would take a lot of memory, but the developer knows some people only use the output from the task manager to compare them.

To get around this, he creates 2 exes 'DownloaderAndDisplayer.exe' and '__UnzipperAndCruncher.exe'. D&D would download the data and pass it straight to U&C. D&D would not show all the memory it is really using because the true memory used is actually D&D + U&C. Who knows what half of the other Windows services are actually helping IE?

There are examples of this in the real world (such as dbus services in Linux).

I am not sure about Windows, but Linux reports the memory used by the app and the memory used by the app + shared libraries as different figures. According to this, Windows is similar.

http://shsc.info/WindowsMemoryManagement

It does not change the fact that this benchmark is meaningless for determining bloatedness. Joe has found a bug, probably in a flash ad which was served to Chrome but not IE. The clue that any benchmark/survey is useless is when the writer starts 'this is not scientific, but...' The tests should exclude all unknown variables such as ads for a start.

Billybob, how dare you suggest I dont know the difference, Im well aware of opensource, since Ive contributed to a few opensource projects in my time. I am also aware of freeware and coming from the demo scene as an asm coder from the days of the A500 I would hazard a guess that I am in a better position of knowledge than you.

The point that you missed, was, I would not trust any software, opensource or not from a company that has an interest in advertising revenue. I dont care if they provide the source or not.

Why should I waste my time picking appart someone elses source to ensure its integrity when I am completely happy with the browser that I use, that I know is extensively tested and created by enthusiasts like myself.

You billybob, are a classic case of someone jumping in and making a comment without properly understanding someones point of view, and certainly understanding the main point at hand.

MS fanboys I can handle, at least they have a modicum of intellect, you Billybob are a classic case of a lamer, next time actually read what people are saying, and maybe before jumping to conclusions have a look at my previous take on subjects, I think that adequately shows I know the difference.

What does it say for a company like Microsoft when even Intel will not use Vista? And now, another partner NBC is abandoning Silverlight for Adobe Flash. Remember, NBC and MSFT jointly run MSNBC network.

NBC dumps Microsoft Silverlight after Olympics
http://valleywag.com/5045822/nbc-dumps-microsoft-silverlight-after-olympics

Simple explanation, nobody uses Silverlight.

Speaking about Chrome's efficient...

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3398&p=2
Qouting:
Just viewing AnandTech alone, Chrome ended up being the most efficient browser with a 26MB footprint compared to 30MB for Firefox 3.0.1, 30.1MB for IE7 and a whopping 48MB for Safari 3.1.2.

Adding the other three sites brings the totals up to 104MB for Chrome, 104MB for Safari, 96MB for IE7 and 87MB for FF.

It’s closing the tabs that’s the most interesting: only Chrome actually frees up memory upon closing tabs. Chrome’s footprint is still larger than its original 26MB at 38MB, but the remaining three browsers continue using at least 70MB. The argument here is that these other browsers already have memory allocated should you open additional tabs, unfortunately you can quickly run into memory fragmentation issues with the conventional approach should the new tabs require more memory than the ones you just closed.

With Chrome, each tab is its own process, when you’re done with a tab - close it and you get all your memory back right away. You get more efficient usage of memory for newly created tabs.

Bloatware to my definition is software which has a large footprint and lots of bits and pieces added to it over time to increase its functionality. Things like Trend Internet Security fit that definition.

Programs that hog memory are simply memory hogs call them Hogware if you like.

Bernie

The Shocking Inside Story of the Epic Defects That Killed Millions of Xbox 360s

http://gizmodo.com/5046314/the-shocking-inside-story-of-the-epic-defects-that-killed-millions-of-xbox-360s

"Microsoft had more than 500,000 defective consoles that sat in warehouses. They were either duds coming out of the factory or they were returned boxes, according to inside sources."

sam cheap shot, here is the rest of the article about why NBC did that and the disastrous results.

"....Because, as SAI notes, while 40 million US visitors to NBCOlympics.com didn't have Silverlight installed, Adobe Flash is already installed on some 98 percent of Internet-connected computers. NBC's move didn't pay off last night. The feed was unwatchable over a broadband connection, serving up freeze fames, blurry action and skipping back and forth as the it tried to buffer....."

BTW. the olympics broadcast using silverlight was great and actually very watchable.

So according to Billybob, there is nothing wrong with Chrome. We should all be very happy with it.
(It is afterall open source !?!)

Well I dont know about anyone else, but Im convinced.

Back to reality for a second, the results and behaviours of Chrome, mirror exactly what I said it would be. Billybob, I dont need to pick appart the source to ensure the integrity, as I said before I am dubious of any package created as "opensource" by a company like google, and from the observations here and thousands of other sites, it seems Im right.

As I said before Billybob, it wont be going anywhere near my system.

Why not apply science to this problem since you are a scientist.

Hypothesis : The Chrome browser is sending data to Google so they can track everyone in the world and disrespect their privacy.

Design a test to prove or disprove this. The code is there and since you are a leet coder you will be able to find the bit that spies on us and show us all how stupid we have been.

The only person that seems to be looking at this from a scientific view is Matt Cutts, he has a blog post entitled 'Preventing Paranoia'. I really think you need to read it.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-chrome-communication/

Obviously you do not trust him because he works for Google, so repeat the experiment for yourself. After that you can give us some concrete concerns, rather than just making claims and then saying you don't have to substantiate them (coz you are a coder and you just know everything).

Try to read and respond without throwing insults.

Firstly I dont believe Im a scientist, nor have I claimed to be. Putting myself into a group I would designate myself as a coder.

You again have missed the entire "spirit" of this discussion and have failed monumentally to grasp what I have been saying.

I neither trust nor distrust Matt (whoever the hell he is) I merely said that I was dubious about any package from Google or similar. The reports strengthen my suspicions, but even if they said it was great, I still wouldnt be interested and it goes back to what I originally said. Which was:
"Why should I pick through the source of Chrome to when I am happy with the browser that I have" Why should I bother? I use a tried and tested browser made by enthusiasts that I am completely happy with.

I tell you again, it wont be going anywhere near my system, thats MY system, I couldnt care less what you or others stick on yours.

I dont know how much clearer I need to be. Since when do I need to justify my action or inaction to some 2bit user. If I had a need of a new browser, I might consider doing it.

To be honest, I dont believe its going to be the security nightmare that people are making out, but one thing is for sure, judging by the posts its certainly got some code issues that need resolving.

Qoute Billybob "Design a test to prove or disprove this. The code is there and since you are a leet coder you will be able to find the bit that spies on us and show us all how stupid we have been."

LOL
If you knew anything about "coding" and certainly in the professional world, you wouldnt have made that silly remark.

Just because someone is a C++ or ASM coder doesnt mean they can take any coding issue and find a solution. Just like any profession we all have our areas of expertise. My area is coding GFX routines, optimizing rendering algorithms etc. I am not in the business of coding internet applications.

So billybob, again, I ask you to actually research something before making another silly remark.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion. The popular one at the moment, regardless of any security issues is that Chrome is not all its cracked up to be.

I wonder what interest you have in Chrome?

@goblin says;
"as I said before I am dubious of any package created as "opensource" by a company like google, and from the observations here and thousands of other sites, it seems Im right."
----------------------------------------------------
Oddly enough, I don't entirely disagree with you Goblin. Although I really do not have a problem with Google Chrome itself, except that its a Beta, and at this time only for Windo$e. If you think Microsoft isn't spying on computer users online habits with their Windows OS and IE, and you are somehow safer with MS products than Chrome, think again. Microsoft makes Google look like a girl scout compared to the amount of spying MS does on its users.

The two "open source" programs I immediately check to make sure not installed on linux are; mono and moonlight, Novels open source collaboration with MS project, to port over the silverlight and net platforms. Obviously, who could trust tying into those systems run by Microsoft. So your point about open source is right for me on these two programs. As far as Chrome and Google, I will try them out when the Linux finished version comes out.

Further note; there is really very little privacy on the internet. Even (especially) in the land of the free.

@Sam,
The quality control of the xbox360 has to be the poorest of all time. Its no wonder that Vista is such a bloated pig and has so many problems.

Quote from the link below;

"The Foundation claims its research shows 56 per cent of people buying new machines, with Vista on, would later put XP on their new box and that 67 per cent thought Microsoft should continue to offer XP."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/18/microsoft_vista_push/

Microsoft's Vista push probed by Fair Trade Commission
--------------------------------------------------
So 56% in Taiwan are wiping Vista off new machines and replacing it with XP. Microsoft needs more than a 300 million advertising campaign to cope with this, they need a new Operating System.

56%

MS pushed to keep XP for more netbooks

http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/09/03/ms.lifts.xp.netbook.limits/

Quote; "Microsoft has backed off some of its restrictions on Windows XP to allow netbooks with larger hard drives to support the older operating system, according to claims from companies in the business."
----------------------------------------------------
So this implies that Vista as we know, cannot work on most of these netbooks, and consumers want bigger hard drives. Soon they will want bigger lcd's. Expect more concussions from MS on this as time goes by. And as in Taiwan, they will want XP, not Vista. The question is will Windows Seven work on these Netbooks, or will Microsoft still have to sell XP Home for the Netbooks then? My guess is that Microsoft is hoping the hardware will catch up to the point that anything will be able to run Vista.

Hi Chips,

Since I dont use MS products and am currently using an Ubuntu distro, I have very little fear of being spied on by a MS product on my system.

That being said, I personally dont have a problem with my surfing habits being looked at. If collecting information on me posting on forums and watching BBCI is of interest to them, then "they" have my permission, whatever floats their boat.

@Goblin;
"That being said, I personally dont have a problem with my surfing habits being looked at."
----------------------------------------------------
Me either, but I should have worded my comment a little differently, as it was not you, but the general public I wanted to tell about the surfing and posting habits. BTW, Goblin, I think most Ubuntu distro's, uses Mono by default, you might want to uninstall it with a search in synaptic, if its in there.

Back to the Browser War's.

Chrome's JavaScript challenge to Silverlight

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10034365-92.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

Quotes from the link;

"I think that the next 18 months we're going to see a 100- to 1,000-fold speed increase in JavaScript as Google and the guys at Mozilla are going to kick us all in the arse and make our JavaScript jittered," Microsoft senior program manager Scott Hanselman told the audience Friday, days after Google released its Chrome browser, which features faster JavaScript technology.

Jonas Follesø, senior consultant at Cap Gemini, agreed, saying that JavaScript would continue to get speedier and that Chrome will become "massively" faster than it is.

"Now Google has stepped up and released a browser with jittered JavaScript and JavaVM, making this really, really, really fast," he said.

ZDNet video: Can Chrome give IE a run for its money?
ZDNet's Sumi Das and Sam Diaz talk about the perks and pitfalls of the
newly released browser from Google.

The consultant said that whenever he thought people had reached a limit about what could be done inside a browser using just JavaScript, some "cool JavaScript writer" came up and showed him how to do more.

"It's going to be hard to tell if it's going to be Silverlight or JavaScript we're going to use for our applications," he said. "I think in the end JavaScript is going to be a bigger competitor to Silverlight than Flash is."
--------------------------------------------------
This coming from Microsoft itself? Well, "a kick in the ar$e" might do some good for Microsoft. Then again, maybe Microsoft just needs a change of leadership?

Chips,

"I think most Ubuntu distro's, uses Mono"

Ive learnt something today then. Ill check my distro.

Regards.

I'm glad you did this, to make me do my own test
Same 4 tabs on a
Dell Pentium 4 3.20 1gigRam
Chrome
Verses
Firefox 3.0.1 "the non-memory hog"
So if we total
chrome.exe 31580
13744
32740
7768
17972
5368
total Chrome 109172
firefox.exe 390328
difference 281156

So yes IE 8 Beta and chrome are Bloat ware but what is Firefox?
Here is Firefox after I closed it by hitting the red x
286880 still holding the memory
When I close a tab in chrome it kills the corresponding Process.
Don't get me wrong I love Firefox, but if we are going to talk about bloat ware
Firefox keeps its size.
If you open 20 tabs in Firefox and then close down to 2 the memory stays as if you still had the 20 opened.
At least Chrome cleans up after itself