When I first heard that Google had released its own browser my first thought was why does the world need another browser? However, after a bit of thought it became clear that all of Google’s offering are web based and that the majority of users get to Google using Microsoft’s IE. Making their own browser wrests control of this critical link from Microsoft.
But as a user do I really need another browser? I know a lot of people switched to Firefox after its release but I was never one of those. IE is compatible with more web sites as well as Microsoft MSDN and Microsoft Update which sometimes caused problems for FireFox. So I stuck with IE. Even so, I’ve found IE to be overly slow at times especially as I’ve had a lot of open tabs. Was it the web? Was it IE? Well, to find out and to satisfy my geeky curiously I download Chrome and gave it a spin.
Actually my first experiences with the browser were very positive. For whatever reason, this thing is smoking fast – especially for pages using JavaScript. Chrome has a light responsive feel even with a lot of open tabs -- way faster than IE 7 which noticeably bogs down as you open the same amount of tabs. I found Chromes responsiveness to be a refreshing contrast to the slowness that seems inherent in most of today’s software. In all fairness, Chrome doesn’t have the extensive features that are supported by IE (for instance, it’s not manageable through GP like IE) but the bottom line is that it does what you want a browser to do and it’s fast. Chrome also has some of the features that you heard about in IE 8. It supports the tabbed interface and the privacy mode. But what you’re really wondering is will it play YouTube videos? And the answer is Yes. You can see the beta of Google’s new Chrome browser in the following figure.
While I wouldn’t run out and replace IE for my office systems yet, Chrome is definitely worth looking into. If you’re interesting in giving Google’s Chrome a try you can download it from: http://www.google.com/chrome
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