Google shines Chrome browser, shrugs off beta tag
Is this the shortest beta ever for a Google product? The company debuted their Chrome browser roughly 100 days ago and the beta tag is officially gone. Considering the Gmail logo still has the word beta in it, this might be a record.
There’s no doubt that Chrome offers a utilitarian, minimalistic view of the web, which can be a good thing, but there are still some barriers to fast, widespread adoption:
- No version for non-Windows platforms, although these are in the works. While PCs running Windows make up the lions share of the computer market, my gut says that Mac and Linux folks are more likely to adopt a non-native browser than Windows users. I don’t mean the tech-saavy Windows users here, I mean Joe the Plumber… OK, bad example. I mean my dad and his friends.
- No extensions yet, which is one of the main reasons folks turn to Firefox. Again, this is in the works and recently, the Google folks introduced an extension framework for Chrome.
- The new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine in the upcoming Firefox 3.1 takes away some of the advantage Chrome has with it’s speedy V8 engine. Both are lickety-split, but what was once a clear competitive advantage is about to see feature parity per early test results.
- Name recognition. Yup, Google as a brand is among the tops in the world, but mostly as a search engine to mainstream consumers. The Mozilla team has worked hard over the past few years to spread the word and get the Firefox brand in front of as many eyes as possible. This will surely change over time, but for now, I think more people know what Firefox is than what Chrome is.
At the moment, the general consensus is that Chrome effectively has around 1% of the browser market. It’s sure to grow, but not at the pace that Opera or Firefox have in the past. My guess: Google will consider it a win if they see 10% market share in the next twelve months. Of course, that’s subject to change if we see Google work some deals with OEMs and get Chrome on the PC as the default browser. It would be even better if they get it on some non-Android hardware as well. Also bound to help: the Chrome browser recently got a Bookmark manager.
At the moment, I generally use Chrome on my PCs (it works great on my netbook) but Firefox on my Mac. Who’s made the switch to Chrome full-time and why?
Chrome is the browser of choice on both my desktop and laptop. My laptop is a five year old antique and Chrome’s small footprint and speed has given it new life. Some plugins would be nice, but the utilitarian nature is a blessing at times. It always amazes me how fast it loads up, especially when compared to Firefox or IE. Being able to drag a tab out of one Chrome window into its own window is helpful at times and the “incongnito” mode is useful when I want to check a Gmail account that I don’t use a lot and don’t want to sign out of the other Google windows I have open. Yep, I’m sold.
Not too bad, but i got my first virus from a long time in the cache of Chrome. What a pity !
And without extensions like Scrapbook, AdBlock Plus (i dislike advertising like crazy invaders), DownloadHelper for video grabing and ScribeFire for bloging… And so on… Chrome is just a nice toy !
What’s up Doc Google ?
I really like Chrome and tried to use it as my primary browser. I finally gave up for one and only one reason – syncing bookmarks between computers with Foxmarks. As soon as Google gives me the ability to sync bookmarks on multiple computers, I will switch to Chrome as my primary browser.
Hmmm… I stopped using it because of …
1. Stability issues – it kept locking up. More stable – not for me.
2. None of my favourite FF add-ins.
Well in celebration of the Full release I fired it up at work and it locked up within 2 hours.
Sigh, looks like it is back to FF.
Chrome doesn’t support smart cards or a full public-key infrastructure, so it’s pretty much DOA in my environment.
While I like some features in Chrome, I cant really live without my Firefox Extensions.
What I often do use Chrome for is If I want to open a site which is resource intensive. This way if it ends up crashing, it doesn’t take my primary Firefox working aree with it.
One of the things I’ll really like firefox to learn from Chrome is how each Tab is threaded, so that if a single Tab crashes, it doesn’t take the whole program with it