To mark Google Chrome's 15th anniversary – it was released in September 2008 – Google is giving the desktop version of the world's most used web browser, a fresh look.
“To celebrate this birthday, we are giving Chrome a fresh look on desktop and rolling out a few upgrades that continue to make it easy, quick and safe to browse on Chrome,” Parisa Tabriz, VP, Chrome, noted in a September 7 blog post on the tech giant's official website.
A personalised browser
Chrome's new look, Google said, will be rolled out in the coming weeks, adding that it is based on the in-house ‘Material You’ design language. The company has:
*refreshed the browser's icons with a focus on legibility, and and created new colour palettes to complement tabs and toolbar.
*better integrated with operating systems (OS) so that a user's Chrome preferences can easily adapt to OS-level settings, such as dark and light modes.
*made other improvements to make it easier to use: a more comprehensive menu for faster access to extensions, Translate, Password Manager, and more.
New extension categories
{{/usCountry}}*made other improvements to make it easier to use: a more comprehensive menu for faster access to extensions, Translate, Password Manager, and more.
New extension categories
{{/usCountry}}The Web Store, too, has been redesigned, and will feature new extension categories such as AI-powered and Editors' spotlight, in addition to more personalised recommendations.
On the security front, Google has expanded Safety Check to extensions, doing so to ensure that your browser can identify extensions that were recently unpublished, violated policies, or were potentially malicious.
New search features for easier browsing
For this, a person must select the ‘Search this page with Google’ option (from the three-dot menu) while on the webpage. This will open the Google Search side panel; here, you can find related searches, learn more about a page's source, or start a completely new fresh search.
Upgraded Safe Browsing
This is being done to check sites against Google's ‘bad-known’ sites in real-time. This will shorten the time between identification and prevention of threats, and is expected to improve, by 25%, protection from malware and phishing threats.