Site Isolation has been enabled on Chrome Beta, and it will be released with Google Chrome version 67. This feature was first introduced in Google Chrome 63, but it wasn’t enabled until now.
We have enabled Site Isolation on Chrome Beta to ensure we get as much coverage as possible before making it the default. If you hit issues https://t.co/aOhzzcmMD8 has instructions. Help us find any functional bugs so we can fix them in timely manner before hitting stable Chrome!
— Nasko Oskov (@nasko) March 29, 2018
So what is Site Isolation?
To understand it, let’s take a look at the sandbox process model of Chrome. Here, each tab is allocated its own process for security reasons. The idea is to prevent the whole web browser from crashing down in case one of the tabs crashes.
Running multiple system processes also helps in blocking malware in a particular tab from sucking data of another tab through isolation. Also, this system allowed the use of shared process for related web pages.
For instance, if you open a single tab and browse multiple websites, then all the sites would share the same process. In case you open a link from a tab, then the new tab would also share the same process being a “related” page.
But this is about to change with the introduction of Site Isolation as it is a stricter process model where each new website is allocated a new process.
Here, shared process system has been eliminated to create separate tabs that have their own system process, and no exceptions are allowed.
Pros and cons of Site Isolation
This new feature would definitely increase the security of Chrome. The only downside to this would be the increased memory usage — something which is already criticized by users.
Even though Google Chrome has successfully established itself as a fast web browser that is used by millions of users, its heavy use of system resources has garnered a lot of criticism.
Apparently, the amount of RAM used by Chrome is far greater than other browsers and with the new Site Isolation features, Chrome’s memory usage is expected to increase by 10 to 20%.
Also Read: What Is The Difference Between Google Chrome And Chromium Browser?
