Product Review: Google Chrome - The New New Thing

Google seems to bringing order to its cornucopia of services, slowly yet strategically. Like all grand designs, the emergence of something big wasn't evident in the beginning, perhaps even to the creators. The basic structure remains the same - to provide convenient access to information through an unobtrusive intelligence layer. The services have been layered in, providing essential plumbing to what is evidently an operating system for the always-connected noosphere.

Another critical component was introduced today - the much-awaited Google Chrome web browser. While one might wonder what incremental value yet another browser might provide as an interface, it is the primary means of human-Internet interaction, and played right, could mean a consistent memory layer that brings the Google Mind ever closer to sentience. From a user perspective, there's little to write home about just yet, if one overlooks the relatively new process-independent tab architecture (IE 8 does the same thing, and IE 7+ separates the browser UI and tabs in terms of permissions) and the minimalistic interface. The pain of giving up essential add-ons and workflow steps might mean more than using the next new new thing, but Google is looking beyond the desktop client, even if the first release of Google Chrome is Windows-only.

In a few months or perhaps sooner, it is highly likely Google Chrome will be the front end of Android-based phones. The non-standard Windows UI used in Google Chrome makes sense when one visualizes a small scale equivalent on a mobile phone. The near-instantaneous startup is going to be handy for an always-on interface. Google might go further in terms of bundling services if it didn't have the ghost of Microsoft Anti-Trust in its rear view mirror. As it is, it allows you the option of changing default search engines from Google and Google applications don't seem to be running any differently within Chrome or other browsers, expect perhaps Google Reader. The most-visited sites are a nice touch when opening a new tab, and the ability to slide a tab over others is a neat touch. There does not seem to be torrent download capabilities and I strangely didn't see any auto-discovery of RSS feeds on a website. The setup told me it was importing my Firefox bookmarks, but I don't see them anywhere, and why leave out IE?


JavaScript and CSS rendering appear to be smooth, and performance is good. I noticed five chrome.exe processes in my task manager when I had only three tabs opened, ranging between 20 MB and 42 MB each in terms of memory usage, but a large number of page faults, and minimal bloat over an hour of running. The memory utilization was almost three times that in Mozilla Firefox for a similar load. One simple script in MovableType gave unexpected results, triggering a search when I hit the save button. Pages can fail to be rendered, with an 'Aw Snap!' error that blanks out the tab. Not a nice experience, to be frank.


Incognito Mode, or as it came to be known when Microsoft announced the feature in Internet Explorer 8 - porn mode - is invoked by Ctrl+Shift+N and removes pages browsed from the browser cache and history, and avoids cookies.

For the moment, I'm not going to be giving up any of my current browsers, and it remains to be seen if this new kid on the block lives up to its promises.