Google Plugin Makes IE8 Run 10x Faster

While the odds of Microsoft forming a corporate partnership with Google are slim-to-none, their respective software is proving just that. According to Computerworld, Internet Explorer 8 running with Google Chrome Frame plug-in runs 9.6 times faster than IE8 on its own.

Chrome Frame was released earlier this week and is an open source plug-in that seamlessly brings Google Chrome's open web technologies and high-performance JavaScript engine to Internet Explorer. (Source: google.com)

Kind Gesture or Smear Campaign?

Instead of taking the high road and leaving the "helpful plug-in" as a kind gesture to an old rival, some suggest Google may have other motives in mind. The entire situation can be thought of as a smear campaign in hopes of establishing IE8 (and in turn, Microsoft) as a slow browser in need of saving.

That said, Google has every right to flaunt Chrome. In a recent study, Google Chrome 3.0 was matched against rival browsers Microsoft IE8, Mozilla Firefox 3.5, Opera 10 and Apple Safari 4.0 with speed being the cause for evaluation. Google Chrome 3.0 proved to be the fastest by a considerable margin. (Source: infoworld.com)

After the initial download, the plug-in will be able to turn any IE8 version into the speed equivalent of Chrome itself.

User Initiates Cross-Corporate Partnership

The user is required to install Chrome Frame onto their computer, but once there, the plug-in can be triggered automatically via a website using a single HTML tag. Until those sites and applications are modified to call on Chrome Frame, users can manually force IE to use the plug-in by prefacing the URL of a site with the characters "cf:" (no quotes); for example: cf:http://www.site.com would initiate the plug-in. (Source: computerworld.com)

Chrome Framework IE Download

The Chrome Frame plug-in works with IE6, IE7 or IE8 on Windows XP or Windows Vista. Anyone interested in obtaining the plug-in can download Chrome Frame right from the Google website after accepting the End User License Agreement (EULA) by using the link here.