Google Chrome Review
Aprox 2.5 years after Google claims they have no plans to release a web browser, they release Google Chrome, so it is good or bad?
Sure Google Chrome is made by Google (All hail O mighty Google!) but does that make it a good web browser? I Don’t think so. Google Chrome seems to be a very simple web browser, and I personally don’t like all these new applications and their lack of the typical menu bar containing the “File” menu and such.
When you open a new tab you are presented with a neat page that displays your”Bookmarks toolbar, Most visited websites (along with a image preview of the page) for quick and easy access, and a search bar.
The bookmarks bar is similar to that of Mozilla FireFox although it is only accessible from new tabs and disappears once you navigate away from that page. This is both good and bad as you save some extra screen space ad don’t accidentally click a bookmark when you go to enter a URL but do you really want to open a new tab every time you want to use your bookmarks toolbar?
You are also able to quickly and easily move tabs around or move a tab to a new (or existing) browser window simply by clicking and dragging it.
When you are typing in a URL the web browser uses Google’s database to predict what website you are trying to access. (Security risk? As it is sending your typed URL’s to them I don’t see why it’s not)
There is an “incognito” mode which allows you to surf the web without leaving traces on your computer, nothing in the history. It seems like this mode doesn’t try and predict the URL’s you are typing either. When in incognito mode it opens a new window with a slightly different theme, it is a darker colour with a picture of a spy in the top left corner of the window. It also deletes the cookies after you have closed that window although bookmarks you create and files you download remain on your computer.
When downloading a file a neat little download box appears at the bottom of the browser window to show the information regarding the download, it saves you from opening a separates download manager.
Google Chrome has (just like Mozilla FireFox) warnings about suspected phishing, malware or otherwise unsafe websites. It is just like what FireFox does so nothing new here.
One of my favourite features is one of the things the average user might not even realise untill something goes wrong! Every tab is run as a separate process, so if one tab crashes then the rest of your tabs can stay open and be saved. (although if you’re like me and usually have 50 tabs open, your process list will be full of chrome.exe’s)
Oh and just a little side note… Does anyone else find it a little funny that all the videos that are on the official Google Chrome website are “no longer available”… I thought that if they are on YouTube (which they own) they would remain available, but maybe that’s just me.
My final verdict: Google Chrome is Stylish but has no plugin support and alot of the features can be replicated on firefox with existing plugins.
-Hintswen
Personally i found Chrome Boring and un-interesting, talk about minimilistic the middle of the sahara has more to stimulate one visually and do we really need yet another browser afterall there is a plethora of them out there already, Google would have been better to spend the money on something worthwhile.
Sorry but for me Chrome scores a big fat zero
Have to agree with you Dave, Google Chrome looks so silly, it basically a single colour >.<
Yeah i think they should put more money into building a decent index i mean it says something when a small hardly known engine like i run can deliver 11 million five hundred one thousand (11,501,000) more results than Google for the same query (phil bradley) they only manage a poor 409,000 results and our bad word filters are harsher than theirs (if they use any) try a comparison http://www.easysearchlive.com and you will see what i mean
I’d post a review too, but I’m a lazy bugger.
Also, the bookmarks never leave, they’re always there, unless you disable them. Frankly I agree with you, I love the GUI but I don’t like the browser itself, I found over 20 problems/bugs after having used it for only 2 days.
Aah but Dave… A higher number of results doesn’t mean a better index. Google doesn’t use a bad word filter AFAIK unless you have “safe searching” on and their results exclude alot of websites that try and cheat and get listed for every keyword known to mankind, so the number of results has nothing to do with it. Even if it did mean a better search engine, that’s one term your search engine beats Google’s on. I tried to search for “hintswen” on a few search enines, here’s the rundown:
Easy Search Live:
Results: 1, 310
#1 – hintswen.stumbleupon.com
#2 – hintswen.com
#3 – hintswen.stumbleupon.com/about
Google:
Results: 1, 350
#1 – hintswen.com
+ Sub entry for hintswen.com/blog
#2 – answers.yahoo.com/my/profile?show=Z3PuBQxEaa (Yahoo Answers Profile)
#3 – hintswen.stumbleupon.com/tag/browser/
+ Sub entry for hintswen.stumbleupon.com/
Yahoo:
Results: 1, 290
#1 – hintswen.com
#2 – http://www.hintswen.com/blog/2008/04/11/a-note-for-you
#3 – hintswen.stumbleupon.com/tag/game
Live Search (MSN):
Results: 211
#1 – http://www.hintswen.com
#2 – forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-user.cfm?id=140204
#3 – http://www.borrett.wattle.id.au/forums/profile.php?mode=viewprofile&u=9
Which search engine returns the best results? In this case I would say Google, It returns my website as first and 2 things I use quite a bit as 2nd and 3rd, Your search engine returns stumble upon twice in the first 3 results and my website is only second, yahoo returns 1 of my blog posts as a seperate retult so that’s out, and Live search is returning a website I can’t even remember using as the 3rd result!
This doesn’t mean the other search engines suck though as they all returnd my website in the top 3 making it easy for people to find it when searching for my nickname.
Oh and I added a link to your search engine on my blog last night =]
Thanks mate actually we have disabled the filters because they were removing any strings containing a banned term ie essex would remove sex which of course is not acceptable as it restricts our results a point to notice though you mentioned we only returned 1,310 results for your nickname while our filters were running and google gave 1,350 well after taking the filters off our engine also returns 1,350 results which would indicate that 40 of the results being returned had been filtered out (possibly just porn links using references to your site/blog).
Dave
If you would like to send me an email or contact me on skype (dginnovations) i’ll arrange some free advertising and links for you
Im happy with firefox and from what hintswens got to say, dont think ill be trying google chrome anytime soon….but hey thats just me =D