Google chrome

[Download Chrome Here] ~ Windows XP and Windows Vista only

Very small File Size.

Impressions:

Installation process is insanely quick. You pretty much just open up the set-up, it asks you if you want to import your settings, and you're on your way.

GUI is also pretty snazzy. It has a spell checker"out of the box". It's pretty fast too but I can't tell much of a difference in terms of speed between this and Firefox 3.

Downside? It doesn't quite render some pages properly, but in a Beta that's something that I expect. Cnet appears to load fine but some sites that i've been on already don't quite load properly.

Sending error reports are simple enough. Click on the Piece of Paper to the right of the address bar and click on "Report Bug or Broken Website", the rest is simple enough.

Also I think that the text in the address and navigation bar is too big. It looks a bit meh but i'm just being really nit picky here.

Overall it's pretty impressive. Especially since it's only in Beta.

At the moment I'm missing not having autoscroll as my mouse wheel is set to skip 6 lines per click so it usually zooms past what i wanted to see. It's very very quick - extremely impressed with it which is saying something for a first beta.

I've noticed they've taken aspects of Prism from firefox (it was an extension that allowed you to have a shortcut to a website (e.g. Google Mail) available on your desktop. They seem to have done a better job of it though

Note: don't close down your tab if there's only one at the top of the screen - it'll close the browser

I have downloaded Chrome on my Windows box because I feel the need to try these new things. 1st impressions, I don't think it will replace Firefox.

Firefox will remain my defult browser for now. But honestly with a few tweaks here and there it could become just as good as Firefox. My only real problem with it is that it has the same problems that Safari does when it comes to rendering web pages.

I shall hold off for quite sometime with this. I want to wait and see what the security is like. Mozilla are very good on security, which I then add to with extensions.

However, what interests me on a personal level with this is the following. One IE-only site I use is Tesco.com for groceries. When I'm using Linux, this means I need to install IE6 in Linux. So if there's a Linux version of Chrome, that will work with IE-only sites, then that would fill that gap.

That's just my totally selfish point of view. Otherwise, I'm kind of "meh" on this. While I would bet my life that Google is a far more philanthropic organisation than Apple is, I kind of view their ecosystem with a similar eye. Whatever OS you're using, you don't have to use the Google ecosystem, although if you do, you're totally dependant on them. This is why I actually avoid using Google services (although, I have just started using Google Reader for RSS feeds). So I'm definitely not going to jump at using a Google browser.

The other funny thing is, that Google give funding to the Mozilla foundation, so Chrome is a strange move. Perhaps they're looking to sideline Firefox?

Personally I think that if you merged Firefox and Chrome you'd have a pretty awesome browser. The flexibility and standards-compliancy of Firefox, combined with the stability of Chrome.

Personally I'm liking Chrome a lot. I think it's got potential to be a solid browser, but it's still very basic. It'll be a good parent-friendly browser.

What I find most interesting about the whole thing is that Mozilla gets almost 90% of its income from Google, and now Google's peddling its own browser, is Mozilla going to suffer?

Or, better still, will Mozilla and Google peddling their wares side-by-side to take down IE even more?

As much as it pains me to say so I don't think we're going to see Internet Explorer losing any significant market share any time soon.

For a start, Internet Explorer ships with Windows, which is the worlds most common Operating System. Chances are Joe Public has a machine running a version of Windows, and in turn, uses Internet Explorer.

The thing is, I don't think that people actually know that there are alternatives available. Unless you go looking for them by looking on Tech Sites or something then the chances of you coming across Firefox, Opera or Chrome are pretty slim.

I think that for web browsers to overtake Internet Explorer there needs to be a different approach taken to marketing. Get your browser in an article in the Newspapers, get an advert on TV, anything that Joe Public will just coincidentally run in to during day-to-day life.

Here's our hands-on with Chrome in Crave.