Google Chrome Beta review - lightning quick, but Firefox still king
By Dave Parrack
Google Chrome, Google’s first foray in to the cut-throat world of Web browsers, was leaked on Monday when a cartoon made its way in to the hands of a technology blogger. The Beta version of Chrome is now available to download from Google, but how does it perform?
I moved on from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as soon as I became aware of Firefox, and have never looked back since. So I am surely one of the millions Google is targeting with the release of its Chrome browser. I therefore couldn’t resist giving it a whirl, even though I am more than happy with Firefox and not really looking to burden my PC with yet another browser.
The download link for Google Chrome now has a prime spot on the Google Search homepage, a space that would cost millions of dollars for anyone other than Google to inhabit. A couple of clicks later and Chrome was downloading and installing itself to my computer. A minute or so later, and the installation is complete, and another couple of clicks and all of my Firefox bookmarks have been moved over to the new browser.
Google Chrome is very sparse and streamlined, and immediately clear is how all of the useless bloat has been removed to enable a very simple browsing experience. That’s not to say Chrome doesn’t have some useful features, but in the main, they are hidden away out of sight and out of mind.
On first opening, the tab is empty, but after a couple of hours of browsing, it soon fills up with thumbnail tabs of your most visited websites. This may prove useful to some, especially those people who visit only a few different websites on a daily basis, but for someone like me who virtually lives on the Internet, it has limited appeal.
Clicking on my first bookmark brings a look of delight on my face, not because I’ve just discovered I’ve won the lottery but purely because of how quick the page loaded. Chrome is lightning quick, loading up sites, both bare and graphic heavy in record times. It is light years ahead of both IE and Firefox on this score and going back to Firefox immediately after using Chrome made me impatient for pages to load - it really is that noticeable.
But that is really it for the good things: streamlined and ultra-fast. Everything else on Chrome either frustrated or annoyed me. Some of these issues could be put down to just getting used to a new browser, but others are just plain dumb.
Why, for instance, is the bookmarks folder is way over to the right of the screen? There’s also no dedicated way of organising bookmarks. Then there is the lack of any add-ons which for someone used to Firefox is a real loss.
While trying to write a blog post with Chrome, I also hit a few issues. First up was the lack of a spell check dictionary. Chrome will let you know that a word is spelt wrong but won’t actually offer any alternatives, leaving you to work it out for yourself. When trying to copy and paste a quote, Chrome always highlighted part of the text I didn’t it to, meaning I’d have to fix it afterwards. Also, the page scrolls far too fast, meaning I had to resort to arrows instead.
These are all minor issues, but they are enough to have stopped me using Chrome for blogging after just one post. This article is being written using Firefox.
Google Chrome Beta includes some nice ideas, and it’s certainly a browser worth trying out. It gives an ultra streamlined and ultra quick experience that will appeal to many, but in its current Beta state, it doesn’t offer enough to prompt me to switch from Firefox.
If Google carries on the good work it has started with Chrome, then in one or two years time, it could well be the ultimate browser. At the moment, what it does offer is some healthy competition that should ensure Microsoft and Mozilla work even harder on the releases of their browsers. And that has got to be good for us all.
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Stumble It!
September 3rd, 2008
i’m willing to try it out just to see if it works more efficiently than FireFox… if it’s faster than Firefox and isn’t IE, then i’ll use it
September 4th, 2008
I read the EULA: it says that anything you do online (e-mail, posts, writing, data) through Chrome is actually the property of Google. On that basis, Chrome cannot be considered usable by anyone.
September 4th, 2008
I for one won’t be abandoning my Firefox plugins any time soon. They changed the EULA if I’m not mistaken, though they do automatically opt you into sending data so you have to disable that feature manually.
It’s shiny, but it’s no Firefox.