For those of you who haven’t heard, Google has released a beta of their new open source browser, Chrome. Currently it is only available on the Windows platform, but Linux and OSX are incoming. I’m using 0.2, and I’ve spent about a week with it. Some quick feedback follows after the break.

Things I really like:

  • Launch speed. Brings up a new instance of a browser at blistering speed. FF3 takes anywhere up to 5-10 seconds for me to launch due to my penchant for extensions.
  • Single process per tab. This means that if a given page causes my browser to go haywire, hey, only that tab is lost. Everything else is fine.
  • Plugins like Flash also run in a separate process. Again, this helps stability a lot.
  • Speed. This browser feels like it’s giving Safari 3.1 a run for the money, and even feels faster than FF3. It makes IE7 and especially IE6 look pretty pathetic. That’s probably because Safari and Chrome both use WebKit as their rendering engine.
  • Javascript performance. The browser uses a Javascript virtual machine, and JS code is compiled on the fly to faster VM bytecode. This has resulted in some impressive benchmarks. [See graph here]
  • Tab organization. Middle/control-clicking opens a tab to the right of your current tab. For tab-aholics like me, this means that linked article you meant to read is handy and close, not stuck at the end of your huge tab list, lonely and forgotten. Also, if you right-click a tab, you get options to “Close other tabs”, “Close tabs to the right”, and “Close tabs opened by this tab“. Very handy.
  • The OmniBar. Search google, history, and bookmarks straight from the URL bar, kind of like the URL bar in FF3, only better executed.

Things I like:

  • Integrated Google Gears. Offline support for nearly all Google apps, as well as WordPress, etc.
  • Web application links. Create desktop shortcuts to a minimal Chrome window for use on any web app, with special support for Google Apps like GMail.
  • Incognito mode, similar to private browsing mode on Safari. Erases all your tracks when the window/tab is closed.

Things I don’t like:

  • Memory usage. While I’m not starving for RAM by any stretch of the imagination (work PC/laptop have 2GB, desktop has 4GB) the benefits of running a process per tab means that for a user with tab-addiction, you could eat up 1GB+ of RAM by everyday browsing. Then again, I’ve done that and more with FF3, due in part to my other addiction: extensions. Right now, I’m using ~240MB for 8 tabs, two of which are ~70 each.
  • No bookmark bar (that I know of). Does result in a cleaner interface though.
  • No extension/theme support yet, but I know it’s in the works.
  • The EULA, before they changed it. It used to say that Google pretty much owned everything you do inside a Chrome window.
  • Missing OSX/Linux builds.
  • No “master password”-type security setting.

Things I really don’t like:

  • Nothing!