Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Idea Drought ?

As is now very common knowledge, Google took tiny steps with their big feet into the browser world with the beta version of Chrome. This is a rather confusing move on Google's part, as they have always been a strong advocate of Firefox and getting a browser, no matter how the positioning, will be a hindrance to Firefox's continued acceptance and possible domination in the browser world. So, I really wonder, who does Google plan to hurt with this new product ? Tech savvy people will choose Firefox without a doubt, but I do hear IE 8 has some nice stuff coming up. Who do you think will be using the Chrome ? Gotta be tech savvy people, again! Is Google running out of ideas for products ?

I was also very surprised by the number of people who have heard of Chrome! How did Google manage that ?? I have not seen any Ads pop up on Gmail or Google Search. I don't remember popular tech blogs reporting about the new incumbent into the browser world till the actual beta of the product. All in all, many things about this product is surprising.

Though I haven't used Chrome enough to be able to give a complete review, here is my first take on it. Its a simple browser!! There are no bells and whistles to talk about, there are no obvious eye catchers (other than its simplicity). Its definitely less memory consuming than Firefox 3. Its definitely faster than Firefox 3, at least under low load. There is no official mention of add-ons support, but I would presume that its a foregone conclusion that there would be add-on support. A simple Google search did give me a few hits about Chrome add-ons, but I haven't tried any.

In a nutshell, this is a fast browser, but there is nothing innovative about it, at least not yet. I am not even closely tempted to move away from Firefox, but then, since i use so many of Googles products, I wouldn't mind giving one more of their products a decent shot. Lets wait and watch...

2 comments:

Dragonfly said...

What I gather from all the reviews and speculations and rumors revolving around Chrome is that Google want an 'insider' in people's PCs which will direct users to their own products.
As you said, chrome is fast and simple. Not reliable as of yet, and one more thing, sooner or later we have to decide how much we trust we can put on Google, since we don't know what they are intending to do with our browsing history.

Ajay said...

Can't blame Google. They need to be "in" it to keep knowing us better for them to make more money.:-) I am sure they have some "evil" intentions, but as per their track record its likely to be much less than others.

Couple of other nice things I got to know as I use chrome more:
1. Sandboxing each tab
2. Fantastic download manager