Review: NEW Google Chrome(Beta)! First Run Of Google’s Browser!

I have to say I’m pretty impressed with the first beta version of Google Chrome! However it still needs a ton of improvement.

This is what I experienced playing around with the browser…

1. Speed and Performance. I was pretty impressed when I first started the browser up. It has to be one of the fastest browsers I’ve seen since Firefox 3 was released. For being in beta it’s pretty freakin fast!
2. Usability. The panels are average — a little simple — but OK. It was a little hard finding the settings at first. Auto completee on the address bar is really sweet, that’s a one up!
3. The Look, “the Chrome” I love the overall design. The light blue “Chrome” really adds a nice new feeling while surfing. The difference in text color in the address bar is neat, distinguishing between the domain name and the rest of the URI. I think the simple design is a really nice touch, since you don’t want a big hunk of a browser anyways.
4. Customize-ability. I didn’t look too deep into it but there’s not much you can do to customize Google Chrome just yet. This is where it falls behind Firefox, which has a hell of a lot of plugins, add-ons, themes and what have you.

There are quite a few downsides for Chrome still:

1. It’s in Beta. Meaning it makes no sense to use it(or take it seriously) until it’s further developed. We don’t know a ton about it yet, it may have security errors, bugs etc.
2. It’s hasn’t been released for Mac or Linux yet. I’m still waiting to download it onto Ubuntu to see how it runs. Google says that they’re working on the Mac and Linux versions so hopefully they hurry it up and release those really soon
3. It’s just a simple browser. Like Konquer and Mozilla(back in the day). It’s going to be a year or two until we know exactly what it’s capable of.

I’m interested to see what Google’s going to add to Chrome next!

So right now it’s just an interesting browser with room to grow, nothing more. It’s going to have to do as much as Firefox 3 and a significant about more until I decide to switch. I’m actually using Chrome right now as I’m writing this post, just for the heck of it:)

Sources: Clinton Skakun