I’m sure everyone on this blog is familiar with the recent release of a new web browser from Google in celebration of their 10th anniversary named Google Chrome. This browser has many similar characteristics to that of the Mozilla Firefox web browser but is noticeably faster due to its cleverly rewritten Javascript coding allowing it to open mulitple tabs with individual processors.

From personal experience I can say that Chrome still has many downsides when compared to Mozilla Firefox. The impressive developer addons available in Firefox are not (yet) available on Chrome. This can make quite a difference depending on the number of addons you use.

Similarly, on Chrome there is no homepage or separate search bar. Some (alike myself) prefer both of these and some don’t. For those who don’t this will make no difference but for those who do this could be somewhat frustrating. On the advantage side, however, Chrome has introduced a new concept with an optional start-up page that presents one’s most visited sites, bookmarks and other various additions like news headlines and weather. The interface of Google Chrome is also quite different with tabs placed at the top of the browser, no options bar at the top and a new, simpler classification of settings and page information.

This new browser has impressively hit the internet market gaining a 2% market share over two days worrying its leading competitors Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.

In my opinion, I would personally conclude that Google Chrome has incredible potential but currently is at quite a loss in comparison to other more developed browsers like Firefox. A regular user will find Chrome as a step down in everything besides speed. I would recommend that regular internet browser users should wait for Chrome to develop before considering a permanent switch but simple web browser users would definitely be better off making the move now and enjoying the amazingly enhanced browsing speeds.

Newspaper excerpt from London Lite, 4th September 2008, Page 14

Link to Google Chrome Beta – http://www.google.com/chrome