By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter

The unveiling of ``Chrome,” Google’s new Web browser, is one of the biggest stories to come out of the computer industry in years.

In Korea, the self-proclaimed capital of the digital world, however, the highly anticipated debut of Google’s latest product was met with relative indifference.

The beta version of Chrome, revealed Wednesday, certainly had a good share of innovations, such as its impressive quickness in loading pages and the independent functioning of tabs, which allows the browser to run when even one of the tabs crashes.

And it even works offline, making it a serious contender to challenge the dominance of Microsoft and its Internet Explorer (IE) browser.

However, all of this doesn’t matter much to Korean Internet users, who are so accustomed to IE, which comes packed and ready on their Window-based computers.

Most Korean Internet sites are reliant on Active-X, a program used to install software components on Web pages to enable particular functions, which can run on IE only.

This means that users of Chrome, or any other non-Microsoft browser like Firefox, would experience trouble logging in to e-mail accounts, be prevented from online transactions like banking and credit-card purchases, and even stopped from downloading officials documents on the country’s e-government site (www.egov.go.kr), which only functions on IE.

When tested on popular portals such as Naver (www.naver.com) or Daum (www.daum.net), Chrome was quick to load the main pages. However, the log-in security programs on the sties, which are installed through Active-X, didn’t function.

The sites of major Korean banks such as Kookmin and Woori didn’t function normally on Chrome either. Accessing the e-government site with the Google browser and the user is left with a message declaring ``install control for Macintosh user.”

However, Google is not intending to miss out on the Korean market and said it is planning to make Active-X operate on Chrome for a designated number of Korean sties.

The company is currently making a ``white list’’ of major Korean sites that would be accessible on Chrome despite their reliance on Active-X, although that would certainly raise some eyebrows among supporters of the open-source movement.

``We don’t intend to make Chrome inconvenient to Korean Internet users,’’ said Lois Kim, head of corporate communications and public affairs at Google Korea.

According to industry estimates, about 95 percent of Korean Internet sites are reliant on Active-X, which puts them in an awkward situation as Microsoft is moving to phase out the program over security concerns.

As a result, Korean Internet users bite their fingernails whenever Microsoft releases a new product.

The release of Windows Vista, Microsoft’ s latest computer operating system, caused a massive disruption last year when Active-X programs used by online shopping malls and Internet banking sites didn't function properly. It took Microsoft and other companies nearly two months to adjust the problem

Another worry is that Microsoft will reduce its support of Active-X in the soon-to-be released IE8, the latest version of its Internet browser.

ActiveX controls require full access to the Windows operating system, which represents a serious security risk as malicious Web sites can direct the browser to download files that compromises the user's control of the computer.

thkim@koreatimes.co.kr