My Impressions of the New Google Chrome Browser
Google Chrome is the new browser that was just relased by Google in an attempt to capture the browser market to give them a significant advantage to their search/advertising business. With Chrome Google will be able to track what actions the browser takes to further narrow down pagerank of sites.
Google Chrome uses Webkit as its rendering engine. WebKit is also the name of the Mac OS X system framework version of the engine that’s used by Safari, Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications.
The install file is a download file which I really didn’t care for. What if I want to redistribute to multiple computers? I believe this is probably used on release day to minimize bandwidth usage and will change later.
The first thing I noticed was that the browser was going to import my contacts from Internet explorer so I selected, ‘Customize Settings’ to change that. I was a little disappointed that Opera wasn’t in the list of browsers to import from, but no biggie. The really cool thing I saw was that the browser DIDN’T try to make itself the default browser on install. It was actually unchecked by default. Which I thought was very classy since many apps try to force their settings on you.
Things I liked
- The first thing it asks you is which search engine you want to use. Although I prefer Google Search over all the others I am glad it at least asked. Microsoft products NEVER ask.
- Incognito mode (Ctrl+Shift+n)
- Seperating each tab and process into its own sandbox
- The UI is appealing yet very simple
- The status bar is dynamic, meaning it only shows up when you need to see information.
- marksanborn.net loaded properly in it
Things I didn’t like
- Like most browsers, they took ideas from Opera (Speed Dial feature, and history search in address bar) and didn’t give them any credit or even give the option to import bookmarks from Opera.
- No plugins/extensions. I am sure these will come soon however.
- It used a lot more memory than Opera
- Hardly any options to customize the browser
- No built-in content blocking
- It isn’t supported in Linux yet
Read the Google Chrome Story Book for more information on the technology side of it.
Conclusion
It’s too early before I can make my conclusion on this browser. I think it has some really innovative features and the UI is great but I think it needs more options and customization which I am sure will follow shortly. I look forward to see what Google does with this. What do you think?
Nice review, and I agree with a lot of your comments. I have been giving it a thorough whirl today, and I must say that I am very pleasantly surprised at its stability and speed, especially as it is the first Beta release. I too miss many of the extensions I have become familiar with in Firefox 3, but no doubt many features will be added, but, alas, probably affecting performance.
Well done Google. I rally like it !
Gordon,
I guess we will just have to wait and see what other tricks Google has waiting for us…
I’ve been using it at home and have just a couple issues. The first, is that the sand boxing makes it use significantly more CPU. I have my fan controls set to be pretty sensitive to temp, so as soon as i fire up chrome my fans start going crazy because of the temp increase, this is not an issue with other browsers.
The other thing I don’t like, is that every other major browser (Firefox, IE7, Opera) do a realistic page zoom, where as chrome just increases the text size (which often breaks style sheets on most pages). Sorry, I love high resolution but am kind of blind