I just downloaded Chrome. The new web browser from Google. My first impression is… this thing is FAST! I mean very fast. Pages that took a half second to load are now instant. GMail (which uses a lot of JavaScript) is noticeable faster.
I haven’t put Chrome through it paces yet. I’ve only tried it with about 5 of the normal sites I use. I’ll post more as I have more to say. I’ll also try to get up some screen shots, and talk about their user interface.
When asked "Why build a new browser"? Google Said:
Since we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if you started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.
So today we’re releasing the beta version of a new open source browser: Google Chrome.
You can read more about Chrome from the Chrome website on Google. There are screen shots and a full digital book (comic book format) that explains the guts of Chrome and why it’s supposed to be better. Oh yeah… it’s Open Source too… so that should make some folks happy.