Google Chrome
As a committed Mozilla Firefox user, I was dubious about whether Google would be able to convert me to their beta-version of their open-source Browser, Chrome.
Launched on the 2nd September 2008, Google claims that Chrome “Gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go” with improved speed, security and responsiveness.
Personally, I’m also quite a Google fan (They keep Ben and Jerries in almost every room, a policy I thoroughly endorse) but there are a lot more people who are equally as interested.
According to Information Week, Chrome reached nearly 2 million downloads in the US in its first week alone.
However, are people likely to stick with Chrome or revert back to one of the other popular browsers such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which dominates with more than two-thirds market share?
The 50MB size of Chrome means on my laptop over 100MB is now taken up with browsers (And my prefered use of memory is for the ridiculous amount of music I have stored on my ITunes)
I’m sticking with Firefox for the moment, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be a convert soon…
September 18th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Chrome’s main advantage over IE is that is uses a fraction of the memory usage. However, IE is always going to be the “out of the box” browser that the vast majority of PC’ers use. Despite Chrome’s press release to the contrary, the browser is not as Javascript friendly and so does not work with a number of high end, tech heavy sites. For me, Chrome is more of an easthetic enhancement for browesing more than anything. However, it’s open source which means that any developer can release plugins for the application so it will continually improve.
September 20th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
it’s funny, the more i use Chrome (for windows), the more unstable it seems to get… crashes a lot more, can’t handle sites with flash, hangs every time i close a tab… all that to say, i’m switching back to Firefox