Friday Blog Question: Have you tried Chrome?

Google has released their own web browser, Chrome – and everyone is talking about it this week. It certainly does have fewer buttons, and apparently doesn’t crash nearly as often as Firefox does. (Wish wish, hope hope!) Have you tried it yet? Will you? If you have, what do you think? If you haven’t, why not?

Chrome is a very clean and fresh approach to the browser. They haven't released their API for extensions yet so I won't be using it as a daily browser until then.  I rely on 20+ extensions for firefox for various web development enhancements and blogging utilities. Definitely some good features but all of them are currently available as an add-on to Firefox. FF3 is also incredibly fast, I used to be a big proponent of Opera but Firefox finally got it together with 3 and I haven't looked back yet. Now if we could just stop IE 8 from coming out, that would be awesome. Or, if IE could adopt one of the existing open source rendering kits like EVERYONE else. That would make developers lifes 10x easier, and give me back more of my own life. That would be great. Nick Hammond

No.  There is no Mac version. David Hibbs

I think a lot of people will be cheesed that there is no Mac version of the browser available. Then again, no one writes anything for Macs, so they should be used to that. ;) Anyway, I've tried it and I like it - I'll like it more when all of my Firefox extensions and add-ons are available for it as well. Eric Reid

I have tried it. I am a little disappointed that they did not release a Mac and Linux version simultaneously, but it shows promise. While there is little that you cannot do from Firefox, The fact that it places each tab in it's own CPU thread to prevent one poorly coded web page from bringing down the whole browser is neat. This is much like modern operating systems like Windows and Mac OS do with whole applications to prevent a single application from crashing the whole computer. With that said, I do not think that Google should go down this path. I think that now that they have created the proof of concept they should work with Apple, Mozilla, and Microsoft (GASP!!) to get add these features to the other more dominant browsers on the market, rather than fragmenting the market further (can you call something that is given away for free "a market"?). However, this could be a Trojan Horse on Google's part to get the ball rolling on the long rumored "Google OS". With the fact that their Google Gears framework is built into the browser, they could essentially build an entire OS around the browser with pseudo-web-based, offline applications on top of an existing OS. Right now it does not show much use to other than being fast, but I will be following it's development closely going forward. Justin Wilson 

Well, first, there is no Mac version which is going to keep quite a few people away from Chrome. Even Sergey when interviewed about Chrome earlier this week said it was embarrassing that they couldn't get a Mac version launched yet. In any event, Google needs to be careful. What once started as just a search engine has turned tentacled out into television, radio, print advertising - content production - mobile phone operating systems, mapping, social networking and on and on. What hasn't really significantly improved? Search. Second, I don't feel it is Google's place to get into the web browser game. It smacks of "Microsoft" to me and blurs the lines even further between those two companies imo. Its been theorized now for about a year (maybe more) that Google was working on 1) a browser and 2) an operating system. They already are trying to develop their own office applications to undercut Microsoft Office. Full disclaimer: I do rather like Google docs. William Smith

No Mac version.  Worthless.  Less than worthless, actually.  I'll give it a shot when it exists, but until that time it's vaporware to me. From what I've read there's little there I can't get with Firefox and the right plugins, and the last thing we need is another browser with its own quirks to code against.  For what it's worth, my Firefox crashes have decreased by a solid 95% since I switched to 3.0 and blocked all Flash of any kind. Joseph Jaramillo

Even if they had a Mac version I wouldn't try it. I understand that they are trying to position themselves against Internet Explorer but with few options at this time, and with reviews that say it's slower than FireFox and Safari, there's  just no point. Roger Hurni

About the Author: Eric Reid

I am the Social Media Services Manager for Off Madison Ave. I've been with the company since 2006, when I was hired to do SEO, and link building in particular. When social networking sites started cropping up, at first I started using them to create backlinks - but they weren't the best for that, given all of the "nofollow" attributes. However, I did see the potential for all of the direct referral traffic they represent. Since then I've been actively pursuing both tactics for clients: Links that can help them for search, and social postings that get them involved in the conversation. It's about the coolest job you could ever get. ;)

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