Google Chrome: Performance and First Impressions
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 3, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Software
Compatibility
Google is in a unique position to test the compatibility of something like a browser, given that the company has servers that spend their days indexing the entirety of the internet. You’d think it wouldn’t be too hard to pull from that index and produce a reasonable set of test cases for Chrome.
Plugins like Flash just work, which is nice, but not all websites play nicely with Chrome. Take a look at NVIDIA’s Force Within download page:
The download box won’t load and you’re out of luck with Chrome. Fortunately the NVIDIA example is the exception, for the most part Chrome has been working just fine for me. How about all of you?
Chrome passes the Acid2 test, but gets a 74/100 in the Acid3 test. That’s compared to 78/100 for Safari, 13/100 for IE7 (Wikipedia lists it as a 14 but I was unable to get anything higher than 13) and 71/100 for FF3.
At least Chrome does better than IE7 in the Acid3 test:
Nice
Final Words
In short - I like Chrome. It’s small, quick, efficient, and my only major complaint is that there’s no OS X version yet. As much as I hate having an overly crowded market, it’s the results of this sort of competition that truly beget innovation.
Google has played nice in the market for some time, but its competitors can’t stand idle. Bring on IE8, FF4 and Safari 4, because honestly there is a lot of sense in some of the features Chrome brings to the table.
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mmntech - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
That's my issue with Chrome. I know a lot of people think ABP is "stealing" the internet but for me, it's become an essential part of browsing. I think that's the only reason why I wouldn't use Chrome as a primary browser.That said, I am quite impressed with the speed of the browser. It's at least as fast as Safari and used half the RAM that Firefox 3 does. It would be ideal for low powered systems such as netbooks with 512mb of RAM or less. It will be interesting to see how the Mac and Linux versions turn out.
granulated - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
....and something along the lines of "Stylish" is ESSENTIAL to me.I'll have another look at it in a few months and see if they've added some customisation options.
evildorf - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
Why not compare to IE8 rather than IE7? After all, Chrome is a 'beta' too.Anyway, I like Chrome's minimal stuff-around-the-edges, but found the window appearance a bit jarring. For my usual Internet browsing, it performs well, though without any noticeable differences from Firefox or IE.
Christoph Katzer - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
As your performance test showed, some sites seem to be much faster and some much slower. Slower until now are almost all German newssites. The popup-blocker worked better in Firefox and I am missing adblock ;)As for the looking it is quite cool, I like the thin and sleek design. Everything seem to work properly without exceptions, just hope the security features hold what they've promised... until now no problems with design of the websites except www.spiegel.de and their ad.
Visual - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
the table on page 4 doesn't fit - the long url http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=red&am...">http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=red&am... in the first column makes it stretch too much, and the other columns disappear under the dailytech articles on the right.phatboye - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
Why was opera not included for comparison? I would like to see a really in-depth review on all the popular current browsers; konqueror, galeon, opera, firefox, safari, ie, chrome, seamonkey, camino and avant.Tegeril - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
Even saying that Konqueror, Galeon, Seamonkey, and Avavnt are popular, current browsers undermines your credibility for suggesting that Opera is a popular, current browser. Which it is not.Griswold - Thursday, September 4, 2008 - link
Well doh, numbnuts. Opera still IS a popular browser.Baked - Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - link
The O fanboys will not be pleased.SonicIce - Friday, September 5, 2008 - link
It's all about the O.