Trying Chrome

Downloaded it and installed it just now, and have been playing around. Strangely, the install didn't kick off automatically in Firefox, but it did in IE. Was this a moment of survival instinct on Firefox's part? Or is Google's install process slightly flawed?

And am I silly anthropomorphizing a browser? It must have something to do with that Firefox logo...

UPDATE: It's good. Very good. But I honestly don't ask much of a browser, except that it be fast and not crash. I have managed to crash it a couple of times, but both times when I was trying to make it my default browser and refused to let a setup.exe file run. Once I let it run, the default setting held and the browser did not crash.

The news is coming fast and furious. There are some concerns about the EULA, but Google seems to have addressed them. There seem to be some implications for advertisers, but I for one welcome strong pop-up blocking.

The multi-threaded aspect of Chrome is excellent. Mitch Wagner of Information Week explains it well:

Chrome is multithreaded, which means that if one tab is locked up, applications and pages run normally in other tabs. And Chrome has its own Task Manager, which looks a lot like the one built into Windows, and which gives separate information on the resource usage of each running tab, window, and plug-in.

I love this feature. I tend to run a lot of tabs, and lock up Firefox all the time. I then have to kill the one big process and start Firefox again. Firefox 3, on my Vista notebook, seems to need a lot of resources on start up. I've never timed it, but it seems to take more than a minute sometimes to start and allow me to enter the first address (I bring it up with a blank tab). I have found it very easy thus far to free up resources by closing a Chrome tab or three.

As someone who has been skeptical of Google's ability to develop anything of significance beyond the core search engine, I have to say I am impressed. Browsers should be lightweight and fast, and Google seems to have accomplished this.

Oh, and it supports SVG!