Like everybody else in the world of early adopters of new technology, I downloaded and installed the new web browser: Google Chrome. Yes, while Google is the chief backer of Mozilla Firefox, they have decided to branch out and create their own web browser. It is available as of today for Windows only.
At first inspection, it seems like just another web browser with a facelift. The tabs are above the location bar and it has a nice, blue look to it. What makes Chrome a notable contender to Firefox, however, is under the surface. This browser:
- Each tab is “sandboxed” and is independent as a task, which means if one site crashes, it takes that tab with it and not your entire browser. You can run “about:memory” to see how much memory each tab and each plug-in is using.
- The browser is very efficient in memory (I can’t say the same for Firefox)
- Javascript engine version 8 is part of Chrome.
- You can create application shortcuts to web apps, with Google Gears built right in. More and more, we’re seeing the web app becoming key to our daily experience. The computer is becoming a mere internet terminal.
- It has an “incognito mode”, similar to the “porn mode” talked about in the coming IE8 browser.
Pages seem to render very well in the browser. And it is definitely snappy.
The only kicker is that you cannot run Firefox add-ons. Some say that won’t be a problem for them. For me, it definitely would be. But, Chrome is only in early beta, so we’ll see what happens.
Very promising, despite it being launched with a comic book.
Here is the video from Google on why they created Chrome:
David Risley is the founder of PCMech.com. He is the brains, the thinker, the writer, the nerd.
Chrome is an interesting browser. The tab “sandboxing” and Gears integration are cool. Couple things I did notice, are the way it handles font resizing is, well, wrong. Also, you are not able to protect saved passwords with a master password…this is bad.
Again, an interesting beta release. Will I be switching from FF3? Not right now. Will keep my eye on this though. Page load speeds are blazing fast and it has a certain sense of humour to it.
I’m sure Chrome will adopt a add-on type scheme. As soon as this happens and it is available for Mac OS X I will adopt it.
Interesting read, i have downloaded IE8 today and so far it sucks which is usaly the case with Beta versions.
A lot of my plugins like skyp, roboform and others dont work YET!
I agree i couldnt do without Firefox plugins, so will probably wait for further developements.
Its all about Browsers catching up with web 2.0, it seems that they are lagging behind in the techy race.
I’m going to pass. I don’t see any real good reason to switch from Firefox. This makes it sorta like the Vista release doesn’t it?
Ummm, no it doesn’t, unlike Vista this isn’t some rehash, Chrome has some great ideas behind it, and I don’t understand why people expect browsers to be like Firefox. Newsflash, it ain’t.
As I said, Chrome has some great ideas that all browsers, even IE can benefit from, sandboxing the tabs is just brilliant.
tried Chome this morning, very fast, quite nice look to it, to be honest with the bookmark toolbar its very much like firefox and rendered the pages and CSS more like firefox than any other browser. It was very fast at loading pages but I still dont think it offers the versatility of FF. When there are add-ons and its gone through some more development it may well be a winner but great beta release nice work google! I don’t use google apps so the gears integration is of no relevance to me personally. If google can now release their own Linux distro with all their apps, browser and other software built in it could be total domination.
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Google has done a nice job for this to be a Beta release. The speed is great, the system resources stayed low and it rendered most websites I tested very well. One of the best features is the Paste and Go option they inherited from Opera. This is one option I wish FF had also. I did find Java to be a pain in the butt when logging into Webmin on my Web Server. It displayed a message that the plug-in was not available. Overall, I give Google Chrome 2 thumbs up.
I’m a bit anxious about the following contained within the T&C:-
“11. Content licence from you”
“11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.”
This appears to indicate that anything that you send via this browser becomes the property of Google for their purposes; and gives them the right to display such publicly om the Internet.
With this in mind I’m wary about using it.
How do others interpret this? I’d be interested to find out what you think.
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