Then it happened. It was almost a rush, really. Google scheduled a quick-ish press conference for today and told the world that Chrome was alive, in beta, and ready for you to
download. Was this a good move for Google? Will it portent greater things? Well, yes and no. It could be a smart coup on Google's side, or it could turn into their Waterloo. Let's take a peek inside and get some ideas.
1) Chrome is flat-out faster. It hands Internet Explorer, FireFox, Opera, Safari, and virtually any other browser out there a notice stating that things can be better. It shows that rendering a web page doesn't need to be a complicated mess. It can be made simple and e
legant. This is something that web surfers have wanted since the inception of the first graphical browser, so kudos to Google for finally delivering the goods.
2) Unless you run OSX or any flavor of Linux. Then you're just out of luck. Google has promised OSX and *nix versions in the near future, but could it be a misstep in Google's plans when it doesn't release on as many platforms as possible at the same time?
3) It eats memory. Chrome is a memory pig. It seems to latch on to as much memory as it can to ensure that speed is maintained.
4) But it's smartly done. Each tab is actually a separate instance of the browser. So while it may be using lots of memory, it's not trying to grab a chunk and continually redistribute it amongst a single process. So if one page starts bogging, you can kill that one page and not lose the entire session. It would appear that Google recognizes that browers will eventually sta
rt munching down memory, so it gives the end user the tools to manage that. Very nice.
5) No RSS integration. My feeling is that Google would hit the ground running and make it's browser integrate into the Google landscape. While gMail integration would be trick, RSS integration is an absolute basic (every version of Firefox has had it) and it's strange that Google would opt to leave it out of the beta release. I don't believe that RSS integration is that difficult to put into effect, but maybe there's something about coding I don't know that prevents this. I'm reasonably sure that this feature will be in the next iteration of Chrome, but it's still baffling that it's not in this one.
6) The KISS Principle is alive and well in Chrome. The interface is simple and there's nothing there to futz around with. This, of course, helps with the speed aspect that Google's browser seems so very proud of. So it's nice and minimal.
7) And good luck doing anything with it for now. Granted, since the browser is Open Source, addons will be coming fast and furious in the upcoming months, so look for options to abound quickly.
There's lots of other pros and cons that I could go on about, but my final assessm
ent is that the Chrome beta is just that, a beta. It's a great rolling chassis that I believe was pushed out in order to introduce the public (general and coding alike) to the idea of how software should be written, most notably for the upcoming Android cellphone release. As people begin to understand software as not just a single application, but rather a framework of usable modules, they will begin to clamor for Google's take on cell phones. Of course, this also opens Google up to its final frontier, the oft-rumored Google OS. So while this may just be another web browser, I also believe it's Google's opening for a much greater performance to come. I, for one, plan on being in on it and I suggest you consider coming along for the ride. I believe that information exchange as we know and understand it is about to be changed radically.
And for full disclosure... I've done this entire post
using Chrome.
Honestly, I really have no complaints since this is very much the beta version. I believe I'll wait for an official final release before weighing in on things.
Enjoy!
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