Google Chrome: Crazy-Fast Beta Browser Wows Reviewers

by jordan | September 3, 2008 at 08:14 am

1364 views | 38 Recommendations | 26 comments

Aside from the odd security flaw, Google's Chrome browser (currently in beta) is getting rave reviews. Over forty (40!) times faster than Internet Explorer 7.

I like the idea of Google Chrome, a lot. But, then I like a lot of ideas, and then the reality turns out to be another matter entirely. Once in a great while, though, something comes along that lives up to its promise. Google Chrome lives up to its promise.

Google offers a site with five JavaScript benchmarks. On each one of these tests, Chrome clearly trounced the competition. I hope benchmarking experts and developers will weigh in with comments about how well these tests represent true JavaScript performance on the Web--either for ordinary sites or for rich Web apps.

... So it's fast.

That’s a whopping 42.6 times improvement over IE7, and 9.7 times over FireFox 3. Keep in mind that these benchmarks were chosen by the team that wrote Chrome’s JavaScript engine (V8). Other benchmarks show a lesser, but still significant, improvement.

More than a checkers move, this seems more like the latest play in the chess-game for desktop ownership against Microsoft. However, "ownership" can quickly become "pwnership" when one company controls your entire computing experience. Remember, that's why we hate Redmond so much.

Also, since Google is centered around search and collation of browsing habits, a Google-provided browser means that not only your searches but *all* of your online behaviour via that browser will be Google's to collect. How invasive do you like your advertising? This isn't to say that Google is actually spying on you, but that the capacity is built in to use your browsing habits as spammunition. That's why I don't use gmail: I'm not comfortable with my missives getting mined for advert material. Call me paranoid, but still.

Anyway, here's the benchmark link- as you can see, not bad at all. Still, the Chrome team no doubt cherry-picked the benchmark criteria to show their work in the best light, but even if its actual performance were half of what is shown via the previous link, one would still be impressed.

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Milieunet

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 08:38 on September 3rd, 2008

jordan, I like this story. It's good stuff.

Ok, Chrome is fast, but Chrome brings a lot of information to Google, very detailed info. I downloaded Chrome, tried it and deleted Chrome within 24 hours. Nice result.

Lots of passwords didn 't work. Where are all my RSS-feeds gone? Nowhere.

Jarrett Martineau

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 10:17 on September 3rd, 2008

jordan, 40 times faster? Interested to see the Mac version! Good stuff.

altrugon

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 14:21 on September 3rd, 2008

jordan, I like this story. It's good stuff.

Let's going to take a look... arrrgggg, only windows... wth :(

Rhonda J Mangus

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 15:57 on September 3rd, 2008

jordan, I like this story. It's good stuff.

mooseburger

at 16:00 on September 3rd, 2008

Happy to see that Google Chrome is using the same plugin model as Firefox/Safari. That means Yahoo's BrowserPlus extension runs without modification. BrowserPlus is this cool extension that makes it really easy to extend the browser to do even more with Chrome (and IE/Firefox/Safari), like drag photos from the desktop into the browser, and hook into services that allow native notification, speech and more.

mooseburger has contributed a photo to this story.

JeffHuang

at 16:14 on September 3rd, 2008

40times is insanely fast. Nicely written Jordan

kauamanga

at 16:15 on September 3rd, 2008

Good article, but, the consume of memory ram is high, for not crash Chrome when a tab crash, all tabs run in different process, this is good, but consume more ram, good article man ;)

kauamanga

at 16:16 on September 3rd, 2008

Ah, other thing, i'm curious to see the speed in Linux and Mac, if in Windows is 40 times more fast than IE, in Linux is 50 :)

dunkelberg

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 16:20 on September 3rd, 2008

Coming to you live from Google Chrome.

I managed to import all my setting from Firefox with no difficulty. This minimal design makes finding your way around a bit difficult.

I will say it does appear to be better with video, as each tab, they say, runs independently and will not tie up the others. I also have had tabs crash and not take down the entire browser.

It doesn't like the highlighter, or I have not cajoled it to accept it as yet.

Videos seem to run much smoother (this is a PC laptop that could use some more memory and is working off a wireless connection). In the past, I often had to pause and let the YouTube stuff fully buffer or whatever before I see a video without a lot of starts and stops.

You can pull a tab out of the window and make a new window. I don't know what practical value that has, but it is kind of cool. Tabs also move around so very easily.

Like Opera, if right click to select "open in a new tab" that tab opens next door to the tab on which the link is located. I like that and wish I could teach the trick to Firefox.

It also has the "preview page" that Opera pioneered. You click for a new blank page and you get screenshot links of pages. In Opera and now Firefox you choose those pages. Google initially picks them based on your useage. That is kind of cool, especially since there is a box with recently closed pages so you can open that last page you didn't mean to close. Opera and Firefox have that, but not nearly so convenient.

You have the private mode. Yes, if you use it, all trace of where you have been vanishes, at least to you. Beyond that, it requires faith. I was surprised to see this on the Google version, as I thought they came out with the browser because MS was cutting them off at the pass with history saving.

Anyway, this is an experiment. Firefox is still my default. Is it the end of Firefox? I think many of are far too dedicated to abandon for a slimmer, newer model (at least with browsers). However, a lot will depend on how much of what is here in Chrome goes to its fellow open source older cousin Firefox.

jordan

at 06:53 on September 5th, 2008

Yeah, Highlight wouldn't work with Chrome yet... since it's still in beta, we wouldn't build out an add-on for it until its release version is finalized: still too many things they could change.

Emilio Lizardo

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 16:58 on September 3rd, 2008

jordan, I like this story. It's good stuff.

Bruno Fontes

at 16:59 on September 3rd, 2008

I opened the same 10 tabs on FireFox 3 (that has a lot of interesting plugins installed) and Google Chrome.

You can see on this screenshot that Chrome uses more fisical and virtual memory than FF3.

The new browser is really fast, but for this first beta version, FF is still better!

I saw the chrome freeze with 2 youtube tabs! :(

Bruno Fontes has contributed a photo to this story.

iGrace

at 18:05 on September 3rd, 2008

Google Chrome seems good..
Is pretty fast when am loading Google based product's pages but can take a heck of time to load other sites..

lgal3824

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 18:23 on September 3rd, 2008

jordan, I like this story. It's good stuff.

Risager

at 20:28 on September 3rd, 2008

Can't update a Google Groups Page in Chrome... "Page editing not supported in your web browser....
Now that's what I cal Beta!

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windyjonas

at 22:21 on September 3rd, 2008

Great task manager

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doninside

at 23:17 on September 3rd, 2008

Really good for beeing a beta: the task manager is a great thing and a real innovation: now if a plugin crashes the rest of the page remains safe, really not bad. Now waiting for more stability, fixes and implementations such as print preview, a bookmark organizer and (as a firefox user) EXTENSIONS!

gamebouille

at 00:20 on September 4th, 2008

Build officiel 1583
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/0.2.149.27 Safari/525.13

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hesandavidyousif

at 03:25 on September 4th, 2008

CHROME is an interesting move from Google and I shall be definately keeping it installed in my system, and using it for primarily testing rather than as a grounding in the development of my work in web.

However, initial usage and glances illustrate to me this could be the alternative browser in the future.

Bob van Martin

at 06:43 on September 4th, 2008

Danish language version coupled with Firefox browser detection equals excellent install support page.

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choongyong.koh

at 00:34 on September 5th, 2008

Google Chrome is cool. Awed by the comic book that described the underlying architecture, and using it is a breeze. Only downside is that some links in Facebook does not seem to be working well with it.

choongyong.koh has contributed a photo to this story.

Monica Andre

at 01:01 on September 5th, 2008

Seeing the conference streaming that launch Chrome at the time, my thoughts where focus on any clue that indicated that Googles' browser was available.

As soon as it was available, I «run» to download Chrome. It was so quick that I only had time to take 2 prints out of it. During that time, Chrome imported from Firefox my bookmarks, my kept passwords and some of my plugins, namely del.icio.us and citeUlike.

I almost didn't felt the transition. It went smooth. My acid test was with my online banking accounts: all of them seem to accept Chrome and displayed nice and quick. And for the first time all the characters displayed fine.

Until know the only small problem I have is with Bloglines, my newsreader. Every time I choose to keep something (click on box) bloglines displays an error.

For a beta, sure Google's worlwide time did a great job, and once again they start clean, without to many features in orther to let as learn our way, slowly until we can master each one of the features we have.

Great experience. Let a new era begin for this happy user!

Monica Andre has contributed a photo to this story.

[S]pectre (not verified)

at 04:17 on September 5th, 2008

How about Avant?
Faster? Slower?

Jeff Mc Donald (not verified)

at 06:04 on September 6th, 2008

I loved it initially. What I valued the most was that it is perfect for netbooks such as my EeePC 1000h. It is the most efficient browser period. However, I had to uninstall it since it kept on freezing. I was on finance.google.com and had only one more tab open when it first froze. Unfotunaterly, it keeps on freezing on different occasions.

When google fixes the problem I will reinstall it again.

Spymaster101

at 14:10 on September 8th, 2008

Definetly fast, but the GUI could be a little better. In my opinion it's too simple. Also somethings don't work: such as the AJAX of certain web pages froze Google Chrome or didn't work at all, and I have also experienced slowing in Flash applications. Otherwise it is overall a good application.