Google Chrome: Finally, a Browser for the 21st Century

September 3, 2008
By

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

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You can even have one tab lock up completely, or even crash, and your other tabs should carry on working normally (I’ve tested this feature and found it to be very reliable indeed). Running tabs (as well as plugins) in separate processes also brings with it added security as the web pages contained in the separate tabs are isolated from one another.

Another aspect of Google Chrome that raises the bar for other browsers is the speed of the JavaScript V8 processor. This new engine treats JavaScript as compiled code rather than interpreting it – which has boosts performance significantly. Testing carried out using the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark and Google’s own V8 benchmark clearly show that Google Chrome is faster than the other major browsers (and significantly faster than Internet Explorer 7, which compared to Chrome is a lumbering dinosaur). Since more of the web is build on the back of JavaScript, anything that makes that faster makes the end user’s experience much better.

Google Chrome isn’t without its flaws. A couple of security issues have come to the surface since it was released yesterday, and there are some concerns over the End User License Agreement (EULA), but overall Google Chrome brings with it far more positive points than negative ones.

Is Google Chrome my default browser? No, not yet it’s not, but I’ve been surprised just how much I’ve been using it today, especially in circumstances where I need to juggle dozens of different Web pages spread across different tabs and different instances of the browser. Now the way I see it, it doesn’t matter which browser is my default browser, Google Chrome has raised the bar in terms of performance, reliability and ease of use and this will rub off on the other browsers.