First Look: Google Chrome Browser Review
Introduction
Quick question: At the top of your head, which companies/software do you think of when I say browser?
Likely Answers: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera and ….. Google Chrome (eh???)
Yes everyone, Google has now entered the browser market arena. This comes just days after having received news that Mozilla agreed to a 3 year search deal extension with Google. I’m a Mozilla Firefox user myself and think this move by Google into the browser market would provide a negative effect for Mozilla. With Mozilla munching away (no pun intended) at Internet Explorer’s market share, here comes a giant looking looking to take away a piece of the browser market share. But hey, let’s not delve into that and see what this browser can do shall we?
Disclaimer: The author only presents only his own personal end user views and not as an expert (nor he claims to be one) of the field.
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Installation
* You can download Google Chrome here
* The installation is pretty much straightforward:
*Read the TOS.
* It detects I’m using Firefox
* Download would largely depend how fast your internet connection is (took a while on mine):
* I suggest to customize your settings first:
* Customize your settings:
* And we’re done!
Wait a minute!!! Something’s bothering me here. Installation was waaaay too fast. Oh I know! How come it did not ask me where to install the program? Where did it install? Did I miss something? I think not. Investigate we shall.
Found the installation here:
C:\Documents and Settings\”Your ID”\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome
I don’t know about you guys but when I install a browser (or any program for that matter), I would create a folder and install it like this:
C:\Browser\-insert browser name-\
Aside from that, everything else is okay.
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Interface & Design
Chrome’s simple and clean look will appeal to users who just wants a browser that just… works. Nothing special and nothing fancy here.
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Features
One Box For Everything Concept
Address bar? Search box? Intuitive autocomplete suggestion? Web history? It’s an all in one rectangular box!
Most Visited Tab
I really like this feature. Opening a new tab shows your most visited sites. Just click on the thumbnails to go to the site.
Dynamic Tabs
The tabs are can be dragged to create a new window. Want to return it into a tab again instead of a window? Just drag it back!
Task Manager
Ending a tab is easy with the Task Manager. That way, if one tab crashes. the other tabs does not close.
Incognito
Surf the web without leaving any traces by going into Incognito mode.
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Performance
Speed:
Page load times were quite fast. No complaints here. Even if I opened multiple sites simultaneously, it pretty much loaded everything.
Rendering:
One of the most important function of a web browser is it’s ability to render web pages correctly (even if it’s badly coded). For this test, I opened up sites that I visit frequently plus I did my Entgrecard run (that’s visiting around 300 web / blog sites) on this browser. It did not disappoint. For a beta browser, it pretty much rendered all the sites that I visited. I counted around 2 sites that did not render correctly. That’s about it. Google pretty much did a good job here.
Memory:
For the memory test, I compared Google Chrome with Mozilla Firefox 3. I loaded up 10 identical sites that I regularly visit on each browser and the results are surprising to say the least.:
I expected Google Chrome to eat up less memory but the results from the Windows Task Manager shows otherwise. Chrome shows 12 running processes instead of Firefox’s 1! Add them all up and it’s memory usage is higher than Mozilla’s! Disappointing.
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Conclusion
Will Chrome replace Firefox as my default web browser? No. I will continue to use Firefox as my main browser and Chrome as my alternate for me to play with. Although Chrome has some pretty nifty features, there’s really nothing compelling that would make me switch. It holds a lot of promise though considering it’s still in beta. They say first impression is last impression and in this case it leaves a pretty positive impression. A little rough around the edges but the potential to become great is there.
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Wrap Up
What I liked:
* Simple and clean interface
* Easy to use
* Pages load fast
* Almost all of the pages rendered correctly
* Very nice feature set
What I didn’t like:
* Terms of Agreement
* Did not ask where it should be installed
* Opening a new site in a new tab via right click sometimes takes more than one click (I do not have this problem in Firefox)
* Memory hog
* Runs multiple processes instead of only one according to Windows Task Manager
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7 Responses to “First Look: Google Chrome Browser Review”
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FYonEC
I tried the chrome this morning, but it kept freezing up during install and wouldn’t load my FF bookmarks. I uninstalled. Another day perhaps.
I’m a die hard Firefox loyalist! Google has enough power for my likes and Firefox is a terrific browser.
I love Firefox! I doubt I’d ever switch.
Hmmm… I’m using Firefox 2.0 and it runs smoothly for almost a year now with all the add-ons I’ve installed. I see no reason why I should switch to something new. I did not even bother switching to Firefox 3.0.
Mahabang discussion ito ah. It actually sounds so technical to me, maybe because i am still learning my way to this complication thing on browsers, googles and stuffs.. but i see that you put your time and effort on this post plus all the screenshots. Bravo!
Nice thorough review of Chrome, I did a similar review earlier in the week. I didn’t cover the install so detailed but discussed and showed the RAM hog that Chrome was when having many tabs open. I was hoping that Chrome didn’t share cookies between tabs since it used new processes for each tab, that would have been a nice feature, but alas it even shares cookies between tabs.
I found your site on faves.com bookmarking site.. I like it ..gave it a fave for you..ill be checking back later