Hands on with Google Chrome

Finally Google released its long-awaited (and much rumoured) web browser today - Google Chrome. Why the world needs another web browser is a good question, but Google is clearly intent on cutting into a space dominated by Microsoft and Mozilla. We've just downloaded the beta version of the lightweight browser (a tiny 475KB setup file), here's our initial thoughts:

First off, Google Chrome is about as minimal as a browser window can be, and it was always the search giant's intention to create something as clean-looking as the ordinary Google Homepage. We like this approach and the tabs are nicely done at the top bar and can be reordered in a fraction of a section by holding the left mouse button and dragging to a new position. Firefox does this but doesn't graphically move other tabs out the way to make room. It's a small point but makes the tabbed browsing process look smarter than Firefox or IE.

The browser clearly doesn't have much in the way of features but it does offer a so-called "incognito" mode which can be launched from the Tools menu on the right-hand side. This is basically a built-in anymous browsing version of Chrome which allows you to access your bookmarks but the browser won't record any info about your visits whilst you use it - no cookies or history.

Another Chrome feature which allows you to put your favourite web apps on the desktop is pretty pointless unless you happen to use one of Google's own products where, with Google Gears, you can have desktop shortcuts to a working version of Google Docs even though you're offline. Some people may find this useful and it's certainly another unsubtle dig by Google at Microsoft's Office suite!

That's basically it for features, Chrome really is as slimline as you can get, but how does it perform? What we really like is the combined search and address bar which is somewhat similar to Firefox 3's new bar although Google's ins't just related to your own browsing history - it does indeed act as a Google search engine at all times - just tap in your search term instead of a URL. This is really efficient and is what might attract new users to it. It will be interesting to what features they add here in the future.

The biggest problem at the moment though (and we know it's day one and the first beta version) is that it is much much slower than both IE and Firefox. Even after storing a few bookmarks and revisiting the sites a few more times it couldn't match the speed of Firefox 3. A shame, as otherwise Chrome appears to be a nice little browser to use. There's also no add-ons library like Firefox so there's very little in the way of customisation and performance improvements, but Chrome is open source and in the coming months we're sure to see a wealth of functionality added to it. Watch this space!