The internet search company Google is launching a web browser designed to cope with new complex web programmes. The browser, called Google Chrome, will challenge Microsoft Internet Explorer which has so far dominated the market. Rory Cellan-Jones reports:

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Ten years after it was born, Google dominates the business of searching the web and is moving its software into new areas, such as mobile phones. It's claiming that its new browser will give web users a faster and more reliable way of visiting websites which now feature all sorts of multi-media content.

In recent years, new browsers, such as Firefox and Safari, have begun to make an impact but Internet Explorer still has about three quarters of the market. Google has shown it can beat Microsoft in a number of areas; changing the ingrained habits of millions of web users will be quite a challenge.

Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC

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launching its alternative
making available to the public a new, different web browser

dominates
is much more popular and successful than other companies in

moving its software into new areas
creating new or modifying its existing computer programmes to work with other media/platforms

claiming
saying it's true (although there is no factual proof yet)

feature all sorts of multi-media content
offer many different combinations of moving and still pictures, sound, music and text

to make an impact
here, to become more popular/more widely used

beat
perform better than, be more successful than

changing the ingrained habits
making people stop using or doing what they have become used to over many years (here, stop relying on Microsoft's products and start using Google's instead)

quite a challenge
rather difficult

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