Google Chrome - First Impressions

Google has just released the first public beta version of their new web browser, named Chrome.

Having only heard rumours of this via various tech blogs and news websites only one or two days ago, I was quite surprised to see a beta released so quickly. Information that I had read about it regarding its speed, security, stability, compatibility and features were quite compelling to me.

In terms of web browser preference, I am definitely hands-down in the Mozilla Firefox 3 camp, so the fact that Google chose to use Apple's OpenSource WebKit rendering engine instead of Mozilla's arguably more tried-and-true Gecko engine seemed like a very curious decision to me.

Granted, my previous experience with WebKit based browsers was limited... I've used Apple Safari (on Macs) only a few times, and wasn't blown away by its capabilities/performance. When Apple released Safari for Windows, I decided to take a pass because it seemed somewhat bloated. In my experience, Apple is notorious for bundling unnecessary crap in their Windows software (i.e. iTunes & QuickTime for Windows), and my opinion was that their web browser didn't really offer anything new or better compared to Firefox.

I've also used briefly used Konqueror before on KDE-based Linux desktops (which uses the KHTML rendering engine -- indeed, WebKit was forked from KHTML). But just like Safari, the lack of features, compatibility and performance failed to impress.

At any rate, Google Chrome seemed to offer a web browser that hits most of the big points for me, so I decided to give it a spin. Here's my checklist, along with my personal ratings & observations:

1. Support for contemporary and modern web standards: 4/5
   - Passes Acid1 & Acid2 tests, scores fairly well on Acid3 (slightly better than Firefox 3.0.1)
   - No major problems noticed using any of the websites that I access frequently or on a daily basis (e.g. Google, GMail, Google Reader, Windows Live Mail (Hotmail), Facebook, Slashdot, various websites that I developed, etc.)
   
2. Speed: 5/5
   - Speed is one of the major talking points with Chrome, and I can confirm that it is definitely very speedy, particularly the handling of Javascript. As a test, I tried running my Stop the Clock at 1000 Google gadget. The clock incremented so fast the first time I ran it, that I didn't realize that it had already passed 1000 and had actually already stopped at its limit before I noticed.
3. Memory optimization & efficiency: 5/5
   - When I read that Google Chrome uses separate processes for each tab & plugins instead of multiple threads, the first thing that concerned me was the amount of memory & overhead that this would require. After opening a fair number of tabs and websites I was pleasantly surprised to see how little memory each process used. System memory usage in total also appeared very reasonable.
   - Precise garbage collection works very well, and just as promised. As a matter of fact, this is something I wish Firefox had -- and could very well have soon, since Chrome is open source and some code from it is likely to end up in Firefox sooner or later.
   - Tip: Right-click the small empty area between the new tab button and the minimize button and choose the "Task manager" option to see exactly how memory is allocated by all open Chrome tabs & processes. This feature is something I like very very much.
4. Security and Privacy protection: 4/5
   - Sandboxing seems to work properly and as expected (which it should for any respectable web browser). Google claims that their sandbox implementation reduces the likelyhood of security exploitations. Without personally performing any formal testing or source code examination however, I would just have to take Google's word for it.
   - The incognito mode -- essentially a browsing mode which allows "untracked" surfing -- is a very welcome feature. Similar features are expected to be available in the next versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox, so the fact that Google Chrome offers this now is very pleasant news. On a side note, these "private" browsing modes only prevent tracking from taking place, they are not 100% anonymous sessions since data encryption still doesn't take place unless the websites you are visiting use SSL.
   - The Google blacklist service -- similar to what Microsoft and Mozilla have done for their browsers, a blacklist service is provided by Google to protect against phishing. While not foolproof, this is a feature that has become fairly standard in modern web browsers.
   - Advanced cookie control and security policy standards such as P3P are not currently available as far as I can tell. I can't give Google Chrome full marks for this reason, but otherwise security in Chrome seems to be very good.
5. Usability, features & bloat: 3/5
   - Chrome is meant to be a minimal, no-nonsense web browser, and it succeeds in that regard.
   - Chrome installs into the user's application data folder. There doesn't seem to be a way to change this or install it globally for all user accounts on a computer. At about 80 MB per user per installation, this seems slightly weighty. Also this makes it less likely for novice/average users to install and harder to centrally administer.
   - There doesn't seem to be any simple user interfaces for managing add-ons, extensions and updates.
6. Developer features: 3/5
   - Javascript console & debugging features are provided and appear to be done very nicely.
   - Viewing page source is also well done.
   - Advanced developer tools (such as the Firefox Firebug extension) currently don't exist, since an addons system doesn't seem to be available at this time, and these capabilities are probably not necessary to be included as standard built-in features for all users.
7. Cross-platform compatibility: 1/5
   - Currently only a version for Windows XP & Vista has been released. Mac & Linux versions are planned, but until then Chrome is unfortunately Windows only.

Final verdict: 25/35 = 71%

In summary, Chrome is most definitely a well built and solid web browser that is worth checking out. When Firefox 3.0 was released earlier this year, my initial thought was "this is exactly how a web browser should be built". After giving Chrome a spin however, I am equally impressed if not moreso considering it is the first public release and yet only a beta version.

Chrome still doesn't provide a lot of convenient features that I use everyday in Firefox, and currently doesn't seem to offer much in terms of add-ons & extensions. So for now, Firefox will still be my preferred everyday web browser for general use and web development. My prediction is that a lot of code will eventually be shared between Google Chrome and Mozilla browsers, so eventually we'll be seeing the best of both worlds and major improvements in both browsers, and very possibly others.