Google Chrome released - first impressions

Jari Ketola
2 Sep 2008 17:47

The eagerly awaited Google Chrome web browser has been released, and is now available for download. The browser includes a lot of promising features - features that have clearly been thought through rather thoroughly.
One of the most prominent new features is the new "new tab" page. Normally when you open a new tab you are presented with either your home page or an empty page. By default Google Chrome presents you with thumbnail screen shots of your most visited pages and a box for searching through your page history. The browser adjusts to the way you use it - not vice versa. Unlike regular page history that is able to search through page names and URLs, Chrome's history search looks for matches in the actual contents of the pages as well.
There's a lot of cool features under the hood, too. Each tab runs in its own process, so one malfunctioning page, at worst, crashes the tab it is running in - not the whole browser. In whole the browser is designed to meet the needs of modern day web users and web pages.
Based on brief, one hour testing, Google Chrome shows a lot of promise, but still has plenty of bumps to iron out before being really able to compete with Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera.
Download Google Chrome now and let us know what your first impressions are!