So I’ve been using Chrome for a little while.  I still likes it, but there are a few things that have come to my attention that require me updating my original post.  One retraction of sorts, and two other things that greatly annoy (and maybe its just me).

1. Chrome isn’t as “small” as I thought: I cottoned on to this fairly quickly after my initial post.  Chrome isn’t kidding when it talks about thinking of each tab as its own set of processes;  if you have a look at the Windows Task Manager, you’ll find there are many many instances of Chrome floating around, probably in some way representing all of the separate silo’d processes that Chrome is touting.  Yes, this is probably good for stability.  But I was initially bufalloed into thinking that Chrome only took up, say, 40-60mb of memory, when in fact, that was only a single “process” I was picking up.  On heavier days, Chrome uses easily as much as Firefox, that is, in excess of 100 mb of RAM, and possibly almost 150 mb.

2. Chrome has problems resolving URLs: I’m not sure what it is, but for some reason I’ve noticed that Chrome has a problem with resolving URLs.   You know: websites.  Its inconsistent with the kinds of websites, but some of them are big and some small.  It drives me nuts, because there’s no particular rhyme or reason to it.

3.  Chrome shows your most visited websites — and you can’t change that (for now): When you open up a new tab, Chrome “helpfully” shows your most visited URL’s via your web history.  If you have not decided to be discrete via the “incognito” function, you might find some surprising URLs that show up that you might not want others to see.  Case in point: I was looking for a gift for my wife the other day.  POOF — URL shows up when she decides to try Chrome the other day.  In this “SFW” example, I was busted and embarassed.  But in this iteration of Chrome this is something you cannot change, alter, or delete single sites, and instead have to delete your entire browsing history.

My laptop is running XP, and its a bit of an oldish machine.  Pentium M.  500 MB RAM.  80 gig hard drive.  Its running a little slower these days — seems to slow right down the instant you right click on a folder, or open up the control panel.  In fact, its so slow I don’t even use the native version of Firefox 3.0 anymore — I use Firefox portable, as its a heck of a lot faster to boot up.  We’re talking about 90 seconds versus about 30.

I like to keep my that kind of operating environment in mind as some of the discourse around Firefox vs. Chrome heats up / cools down, particularly as some of the rhetoric revolves around the speed of said browsers (of which I contributed a small at amount), one thing that sticks out that Mozilla has yet to address is how heavy Firefox has become.  Sure Firefox 3.1 might be fast.  Firefox 3.0 might be fast for some.  

But there are two damnable things in my experience that Firefox has yet to improve with each iteration, which are all the more sensitive with older laptops and PCs:

1. boot up times: As stated earlier, it takes what seems to be an age and a half for Firefox to boot up.  Its so painful I have stopped using it, for fear its going to crash and necessitate me to restart it.  I have the attention span of a gerbil at times, and boot up times — particularly on this old laptop — have sunk into the unacceptable range many months ago.

2. memory footprint: Tried booting up Firefox 3.0 just for comparison’s sake.  Right off the bat, its using about 80 mb of space.  Its not uncommon for it to use about to 200 mb, and on my desk top closer to 500 mb.   Chrome?  About 60mb.  And that’s with all kinds of tabs and theatrics going on.

Sure, part of the problem are the plugins that I’ve installed.  Perhaps I need to optimize and tweak my about:config a little better.  But really?  The gerbil part of my mind says that I don’t have to do that when there’s an easier alternative at the moment.  Quite frankly, I don’t even miss my plugins that much at this stage of the game.

I mean, let’s go back to start up times.  On this old crickety laptop, Chrome boots up in about 0.5 seconds.  BAM.  Literally a blink of an eye.  And the sheer awesomeness of *that* is going to be something that’s hard to beat in this gerbil’s mind.

Having played around with Google’s new browser, Chrome, I’d like to offer my two bits to the ongoing bloggasm around its release.  If you’re looking for an indepth review, wander over to Uncle Walt’s breakdown. I modestly submit to you that if you’re a busy individual, these are the only two things you really need to know before you go and try it out for yourself.

1. Its incomplete, but that’s ok. 

In fact, its more than ok.  Its practically zen in how fast, how small, and how lightweight it is.  Its also standards compliant.  True, its many features echo things that either IE8 does, or Opera does, or what Firefox extensions do, but to me that’s neither here nor there.  What’s glaringly missing, however, is that unlike Firefox, it doesn’t (yet?) support extensions or plugins.  That means no Firebug.  No ad block.  And no Delicious tagging.  Also there’s no Auto-RSS subscribing feature.  Its focus, apparently is web applications present and future, which is something I’ll talk about briefly in a second, and for what its worth, they too are light and snappy as well (picnik was absolutely rocking)  If memory leakage is a problem for you, brief tests (by me) seem to show that its pretty tight ship at around 60mb with multiple windows open, javascript and AJAX going and so on.  Bottom line:  it works very well at being a browser, but its missing some very important bells and whistles that power users might need.  

2. In fact, its probably part of the plan.

From Google’s point of view, Chrome is probably only one part of a multi-year over-reaching strategy that precious few are privvy too.  It probably involves buying up tons of dark fibre.  Of building secret data stations all around the States.  And last, but not least, that Android thing that got so much hoopla, and its own emphasis on applications and rich media.  I think its probably impossible to know EXACTLY how Chrome plays a role in all of this, but I think its a safe bet that Google wants as much as control as humanly possible over how it delivers web experiences, and if all of the above strategic moves are consistent with that, then owning its own browser? A triple check in that category as well.

BTW, exactly how multi-year is the Chrome plan?  I’m going to say that there’s probably a strategic document that says Chrome will probably be ready to hit prime time in a minimum of 3 years, although they’ll continue to evolve the product in stages over that time frame.

Why three years?  Its no hard and fast indication, but Google’s renewed its financial and joint-venture relationship with the Mozilla Foundation until 2011.  I don’t care what the public relations folk say: Firefox and Chrome are headed for a collision course, and Google’s happy to give the appearance of playing along for a few years until its good and ready to pimp Chrome on its own real estate.

Lots of interesting news about Google’s new browser, Chrome, and lots more interesting questions around it.  I love the comic by Scott Adams McCloud, being a fan of his work (mainly Understanding Comics and Making Comics ) as well, but that’s beside the point.  The most surprising news, for me, is that its not being released at some unknown period in the future, but tomorrow.  As in two hours from now.  For news this big, its kind of amazing we haven’t heard anything trickle out except for unsubstantiated rumours.  That’s awesome.

The other thing that struck me is that Chrome could be crap — and it probably won’t, but it could be — and yet, the penetration of this product could be *huge*.  Google owns almost 70% of the total search in North America.  70%!  Even if no one else wrote about it, there was no blogger buzz, and no coverage that we all expect in tomorrow’s news … all it has to do is throw up some strategic links on its SERP’s, on its home page, and on all of its applications (since Chrome will exist for web applications it would be especially apropros), and this will still get thousands and thousands of downloads on the strength of Google’s web presence alone.

And that’s not even taking into the consideration some people think of Google as the Internet itself.