For all you techies out there, Google has released a beta version of their own browser, called Chrome. If you want to give it a try, you can download it here.
While everyone thinks of Google as the omniscient juggernaut of the Internet, that's not quite the reality. Yes, they own Internet searching, and they have created many excellent products and services, like Google Maps and Google Earth. But, they've had plenty of flubs, too. I mention this to say that it's too early to tell whether Chrome will be a smash hit or another flub. Here are my first impressions.
It was very easy and quick to install, though I had to close my other browsers to import settings from them. Slight annoyance, but no big deal. The hype around Chrome says it's fast and minimal. It was truly minimal, and did move like lightning. It opens to a home page that shows recently visited pages, and a search box on the side (though you can change this). Nice clean interface, very un-busy. I like that. The app itself was colored in the vivid XP blue style, which I didn't like at all. In keeping with Google's core business (search), it integrated online searches with local machine searches pretty well. It was a streamlined browsing experience, and web pages opened quickly...for the most part.
I tried Chrome on both a Vista machine and an XP machine. It performed pretty well on the Vista machine, but some pages were rendered strangely or with partial information. On the XP machine it was essentially useless: I couldn't access Gmail, nor Google News, so I quit trying after that.
My general first impression is that this is a beta, so it is reasonable to have problems. At this point, those problems are big. If Google corrects them and makes this a legitimate browser for power users, Chrome could provide some serious competition for Internet Explorer. Google has the deep pockets and resources to seriously compete with Microsoft, and they seem to be indicating that's what they want to do, both with the new browser and with Office-like functionality. The open-sourced Firefox browser has captured about 20% of market share from Internet Explorer over the past few years, and that's with just a bunch of volunteers who want an alternative to IE. With a major corporation backing Chrome, the whole game could change. But, right now, Firefox is hands down better than Chrome. It has a horde of add-ons that can be used to customize and streamline Firefox, and is a much more stable and user-friendly browser at this point.
Will Chrome become a player in the field? Maybe. Are they yet? Not even close. I'm going back to Firefox.
While everyone thinks of Google as the omniscient juggernaut of the Internet, that's not quite the reality. Yes, they own Internet searching, and they have created many excellent products and services, like Google Maps and Google Earth. But, they've had plenty of flubs, too. I mention this to say that it's too early to tell whether Chrome will be a smash hit or another flub. Here are my first impressions.
It was very easy and quick to install, though I had to close my other browsers to import settings from them. Slight annoyance, but no big deal. The hype around Chrome says it's fast and minimal. It was truly minimal, and did move like lightning. It opens to a home page that shows recently visited pages, and a search box on the side (though you can change this). Nice clean interface, very un-busy. I like that. The app itself was colored in the vivid XP blue style, which I didn't like at all. In keeping with Google's core business (search), it integrated online searches with local machine searches pretty well. It was a streamlined browsing experience, and web pages opened quickly...for the most part.
I tried Chrome on both a Vista machine and an XP machine. It performed pretty well on the Vista machine, but some pages were rendered strangely or with partial information. On the XP machine it was essentially useless: I couldn't access Gmail, nor Google News, so I quit trying after that.
My general first impression is that this is a beta, so it is reasonable to have problems. At this point, those problems are big. If Google corrects them and makes this a legitimate browser for power users, Chrome could provide some serious competition for Internet Explorer. Google has the deep pockets and resources to seriously compete with Microsoft, and they seem to be indicating that's what they want to do, both with the new browser and with Office-like functionality. The open-sourced Firefox browser has captured about 20% of market share from Internet Explorer over the past few years, and that's with just a bunch of volunteers who want an alternative to IE. With a major corporation backing Chrome, the whole game could change. But, right now, Firefox is hands down better than Chrome. It has a horde of add-ons that can be used to customize and streamline Firefox, and is a much more stable and user-friendly browser at this point.
Will Chrome become a player in the field? Maybe. Are they yet? Not even close. I'm going back to Firefox.
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