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Google’s web browser is now available for download, at least if you’re running a Windows system with XP or Vista. It is a lightweight, fast, and pretty stable browser, although perhaps not as smashingly great as Google had hoped. Give it a go and tell us what you think, or read up.
There are a billion reviews and initial thoughts on Google Chrome out there, the Techmeme discussion is a good place as any to follow up on the reports across the blogosphere. A few posts, articles, reviews, and overall coverage, caught my eye, though: - Google on when we’ll see Chrome for Mac and Linux. Not soon, we’re talking months, it seems.
- Head to Head: Chrome vs IE8 is an interesting comparison with the Internet Explorer 8 beta, which shares a lot of common features (such as each tab being an individual process) with Chrome.
- OStatic’s hands-on report: “It’s a fast, clean, stable beta browser that shows promise but will need community support.”
- The Venturebeat review points to problems with Flash, which comes pre-loaded with Chrome, and how issues with it carries across tabs. I don’t find that particular issue surprising at all, but if they could solve it that’d be great.
- Geeks are Sexy has got a nice review of the Chrome browser, including the install process and everything.
- ReadWriteWeb points to a serious security flaw in Chrome, something that came with an old version of Webkit, which Chrome is built upon. Since this is fixed by Apple already, Google not implementing it is certainly weak at best.
- Walt Mossberg reviews Chrome and also compares it to other browsers in a beefy review over at AllThingsD. He is obviously impressed, and talks about the new browser war: “With the emergence of Chrome, consumers have a new and innovative browser choice, and with IE8, the new browser war is sure to be a worthy contest.”
- This javascript benchmark (labeled 2008 September 2) shows that Safari is still king of the hill, and Chrome being slower than Opera and Firefox 3 as well, despite the whole V8 super-duper-javascript talk. The commentary to the test includes: “Then again, a lot of Google Chrome’s claim to fame isn’t really geared to a benchmark test like this — it’s more intended for security and live applications that require extensive garbage collection and utilizing non-linear loading of page elements.”
- Lively doesn’t work in Chrome. Ouch.
- Jack Schofield asks if there really is anything original in Chrome. A valid question, given the fact that a lot of the news are available in IE8, and the speed dial is taken from Opera.
- Om Malik’s coverage has been listed in the previous post, but this is new: Google Browser Puts the Cloud To Work and Google Open Sources Skia Graphics Engine. Bonus: Liz Gannes asks why Google abandoned Firefox.
- Finally, Chromium is the name of the open-source browser project, available now. This is what Google Chrome is built on.
I took Google Chrome for a spin yesterday, and it is indeed fast and responsive. However, personally the fact that the browser isn’t available for Mac or Linux is the killer, although I could run it virtualized of course (I do that with Internet Explorer to test code). What are your Google Chrome experiences so far?
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