Google's Chrome Arrives - Page 2

Chrome's other strength is its speed. While online tests by certain users have claimed it's not as rapid as Firefox or IE in its rendering, I've not noticed any dramatic decrease on less interactive sites. In fact, I think scrolling around a page feels quicker using Chrome than Firefox 3, but that could be purely imagination. One area where Chrome definitely outperforms its rivals is on pages with lots of Javascript. Gmail, Google Calendar, Google's application suite, Flickr, and notably MobileMe all run blazingly quickly. Chrome should be investigated by anyone who stores their life in Google's particular cloud, and it offers by far the best Me.com experience on a Windows system.

There's been much discussion in the last few days around whether Google are trying to crush Microsoft, how Mozilla will feel about one of their largest financial supporters creating a competing product, and why exactly Google feel the need to introduce yet another browser. I would argue that this impressive Javascript performance, specifically Chrome's new "V8" engine, is precisely the point of Google's release. As more and more of their online offerings become more and more demanding, they're going to need a browser that's able to cope with the sophisticated web development techniques their developers are using. Microsoft, and arguably Mozilla, have no real need to enhance this element of their browsers. Interestingly Apple, with their new Me.com-based suite, stand to benefit the most from the technologies presented in Chrome - technologies that Google are encouraging other developers to adopt. Given that WebKit can be found at the heart of both browsers, I'm sure Apple will be doing some borrowing in the very near future.

There are some areas in which Chrome is currently lacking. Bookmark management is essentially non-existent, but you could argue that User 2.0 is much more at home with services like delicious.com than using their browser's bookmarking engine. Currently there's no browser extension support, and there's no progress bar to indicate how long a page is going to take to load. This last point may be a design decision on Google's part: a watched pot never boils, and if you're sitting watching a slowly moving progress bar your page feels like it's taking longer to load. There's enough visual indication that the browser is doing something so maybe they deemed a progress bar unnecessary.

I suspect there are still secrets locked away inside Chrome. Even if not in this first beta release, there will almost certainly be changes in future versions. Google are famous for keeping their products in beta for a very, very long time, so they'll be in no rush to finalise Chrome. Given the product's open source nature, there may well be enhancements and revelations to come in the next few days. One important by-product of making the browser open source is the question of trust: many writers have voiced their suspicions that Google will quietly catalogue their browsing habits and store them away for future use. With an open source product, this is virtually impossible to achieve without massive Internet scandal.

Article Author: Daniel Woolstencroft

Daniel Woolstencroft is the brains behind Is There Food? - containing topics as diverse as zombies, Apple, technology, film, and other assorted strangeness. Also follow him on Twitter.

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