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Google’s new Chrome browser: Download link, other info
September 2, 2008 | 5:09 pm
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By David Rothman
Google has posted a download link and other information for the Chrome browser, discussed earlier today from an e-book angle. I installed it without hassles, and, like Mike Cane, am happy so far.
The big issue is whether it’ll be less of a memory hog than Firefox.
I’m also curious if Chrome wil work with Firefox plug-ins, such as those to display searches at specific sites.
Firefox bookmarks and other settings imported instantly.
So where does this leave Google’s relations with the Mozilla Foundation? Less money for the foundation from Google in the future?
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Comments:
*sigh* I’m using Fox to post this. I miss Chrome, but I need my Fox plug-ins (I hit a YouTube vid I wanted to keep, but no way to do so with Chrome!). And is it a blindness of mine or is there actually *no* icon to STOP a page from loading? Hit SHIFT and ESC to get a nifty pop-up of what’s eating your memory. I had NO problems with Chrome on my crappy PC. It was glorious. It even steered me away from pr0n sites that had malware in them (such accessing of them was, of course, for scientific-like browser testing!). I wish I could switch to it RIGHT NOW.
It won’t use Firefox plug-ins, but at the press conference they said that an extension architecture (which is what they call what Firefox calls “plug-ins” to avoid confusion with Flash, etc. plug-ins) would be one of the next things on their agenda.
Extensions or no, I have to say it’s pretty darned fast to load pages.
When loading up a bunch of tabs (I loaded up one of my tab sets with 72 sites) Chrome and FF3 used about the same amount of memory – about 700MB.
Chrome did seem to load them up faster and I was able to start viewing sites a bit more quickly than in FF3.
However, like Mike, I am too dependent on various (and many) FF plug-ins so it may be quite a while before Chrome becomes my main browser.
It does seem very nice though. Just have to wait and see where it goes.
Chrome looks and feels really smooth and I think it has a bright future. I’ve found all web pages seem to load faster, not just Google’s JavaScript heavy sites like Gmail.
Couldn’t agree more re: Firefox add-ons, it seems like a pretty universal request. Having said that, I guess they have their own plans. If they are making this a platform for web applications, and taking the approach of starting from scratch more or less, then I presume their extensions will be optimized for this purpose in a way that Firefox add-ons aren’t.
It will be interesting to see what happens to the relationship between Mozilla and Google. I dare say the funding is going to continue after the current agreement is up, if Firefox can keep a large chunk of it’s market share.
People searching for Chrome plug-ins is the #1 search term on my blog. I *miss* Chrome. Fox is so sadly slow.