OK, I resisted it a little bit, but I finally went and downloaded Google Chrome….
Interesting that it’s only available for Windows first and not Mac, but Google must figure that market is already sewn up by Safari on the Mac (mind you the way Apple keep offering me Safari with iTunes it must be on half of Windows users machines by now – anyone know how I stop that?!).
475kB download??? I assumed it was quick because I’m on the corporate network and it’s probably in the cache but that will be quick on almost any connection – I’m suspecting it downloads more stuff as it installs?
Installation is a couple of clicks and it’s away…
Interestingly at work my default browser is IE (for corporate sites it’s easier), so it immediately imports from there rather than Firefox. I suspect at home that will be a different case. Actually it’s quite a relief as I’d already got 10 tabs open and suspected I might have to close them all down like Chris.
It seems to have imported all my IE stuff quite well, including all the proxy settings for the corporate firewall, interestingly when I go to “Under the Hood -> Change Proxy Settings” it appears to be using the OS proxy settings as they’re configured in LAN settings.
That said this almost the only thing worth playing with in the Options, very limited at the moment in there.
Things I liked within two minutes of playing….
- Task Manager for tabs…
Oh the joy of an out of control plugin crashing Firefox and all your open tabs as it chews up 400MB of memory… This should stop all of that, mind you as a colleague pointed out, is this just a front runner to a Google OS that’s integrated with Chrome? - Incognito Mode:
You’ve gone incognito. Pages that you view in this window won’t appear in your browser history or search history, and they won’t leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window. Any files that you download or bookmarks that you create will be preserved, however.
Definitely good for internet cafe’s and shared machines.
- Flash etcWorking straight out of the box by the looks of it… Now that is nice.
Things I’m not sure about:
- That status bar thing, I like my status bar, it helps me identify phishing sites etc. But the Chrome version only pops up when I float over a link.
- The lack of status bar brings me to another thing, in my Firefox status bar I have my adsense earnings… Plugins, or lack of them – I can’t see any real way to extend Chrome, this is still beta so that may come I guess.
- RSS feeds in the URL bar, I’m used to seeing that appear for any sites that have a feed. For my own site I’m fortunate enough to have an RSS button on the actual page, but I tried to subscribe to John Lilly’s blog in Google Reader and it wasn’t obvious… I confess – I copied the link to Friefox!
The guys at Mozilla don’t seem too bothered saying they welcome the competition a new browser in the market will create. The interesting part as so many Google developers have contributed to the Mozilla project, will be to see how many plugins end up built into Chrome, and whether a plugin interface appears later in the release cycle. I agree with Mozilla CEO John Lilly at the moment:
I personally think Firefox 3 is an incredibly great browser – the best anywhere
Read more about Mozilla’s thoughts on John’s own blog.
UPDATE: You’ll have read in the comments the concerns of Andrew and many others about the terms of service that Google have included. Matt Cutts has updated us on this being changed.
Lack of a status bar is one of those “killer” parts for me. No status bar, no sale.
I know exactly what you mean Chris…. I’ve only just got into using Twitter via Twitterfox – I don’t want that gone as well… Firefox 3 for me I think…
Hi Keiron,
I’m still going to wait on the OSX version – and I am still not sure about those terms of service 🙂
I think that Mozilla will need to be a bit worried – because if Chrome is faster, it will eventually take over.
Cheers, Andrew
Andrew Boyds last blog post..Does Google own my blog if I post through Chrome?
Those terms are very concerning, if they were ever acted upon.
It’s faster and lighter (and I like the task manager functionality), but I don’t like the lack of my favourite plugins!
The terms appear to have been updated, as reported by
Matt Cutts!
Actually as much as I’m in love with Firefox, the new IE8 beta seems to be much faster than Chrome or Firefox. I’ll probably still stick with FF3, but looking at IE8 might be worth thinking about.
Arrrgghh no, I don’t think I could go back to IE at home… I use it at work and really see no way back into that territory for me!
Chrome is definitely faster,
If some say a tweaked up firefox could do the same , would u really re-configure every system again and again? at the office at ur friend’s place at home… etc. and update each for the new versions? and each extension for each new version.
IE 8, well i used that too, its too slow, espescially when you use with a lot of pages and tabs and its initial startup with the addins.
I tested chrome on both high end and low end systems.. it came out trumps.
It is stable, but it has its flaws, as in it does not handle some links properly in some ajax based sites like facebook apps. etc.
It does not support j-initiator, though it does support java applet.
Jacobs last blog post..
Chrome has definitely lots of potential. The browser that works the fastest at a decent memory usage and has lots of flexibility will win me over. For now it’s Firefox for me, Chrome when it’s improved!