Google Chrome First Impression: Is It What You Expected?

Filed under: Google, Analysis, Browsers

Like most of the rest of the Internet, I jumped on the Google Chrome download as soon as it went live. So far, I'm not really blown away.

Maybe I need to use it for more than a couple of hours. Maybe the blogosphere hype machine pushed my expectations to the point of being unrealistic. Sure, Chrome looks nice. It does render some pages a hair faster than Firefox - for example, Google Docs, reader, and GMail. I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

Still, I've already got a great web browser (Firefox) with some great addons that I use heavily. Some of the sites I use every day (including Blogsmith, our blogging platform) I'm not about to switch to Chrome just because it's shiny and new (no pun intended).

Maybe the point to all this is that Chrome isn't supposed to be for people that like Firefox. I can see average Internet Explorer user liking it just fine: the interface is clean and straightforward, and it's great at what it does do. Google's got massive brand power, and that may be enough to finally make some inroads with the people using IE "because it's there."

Me, I'm sticking with Firefox for now. We'll see what the competitors can muster for their final releases.

What do you think of Chrome so far? Is it good enough to make you switch? Let's see some comments.

Google Chrome First Impression: Is It What You Expected? originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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