Google Chrome browser

Google wanted a piece of the cell phone pie, hence android. And you need a web browser for any mobile device nowadays, hence the Chrome browser.

It is advertised as lightweight, easy to install and fast. People I know who've tried agreed. I naturally was skeptical. Having in mind that this is still in beta, I navigated around with it a bit, and here are the thoughts.

Speed: Google has become such a popular page people naturally test any browser with google.com. It loads fast on Chrome but in reality, it loads fast on any browser. Objective comparison on a slow machine with Firefox3 (with no plug-ins) and Chrome shows that there are no difference. Personally I think there's a little bit of a super market taste test thing going on here. You try a little piece with in front of a suggestive voice, it's always good.

Look and feel: The design of the GUI is nothing but clever. It looks thin, I think that's where people get the lightweight feelings from. It does away with the status bar and menu bar, giving you more viewable space, that's a plus, but you can actually do similar things in Firefox, if you so desire. However, the fact that it is not skinnable alone will stop me from switching.

No Java?: Only JRE 6 with update 10 RC is supported. Many people in this world are stuck with older Java versions for their existing apps. Not Chrome's fault but this is a practical downside to using this browser. Besides, I expected to be able to click on the area and be brought to the corresponding Java download site, that didn't happen.



Status message: Both the connecting and downloading indicators show inconspicuously at the lower left corner, some how that's inexplicably appealing to me.


... and now comes my more than layman evaluation...

Incognito mode: If I were the product manager I won't promote this feature as shamelessly as it had been. The banner says: Pages you view in this window won't appear in your browser history or search history, and they won't leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window. Which apparently gives the user a false sense of security because it goes on to explain: Any files you download or bookmarks you create will be preserved, however. What does that mean? That means there will be traces of the flash videos you have viewed, etc. because cache created by third party browser add-ons will not be wiped clean. In fact, plenty of other browsers have made such attempt already, like browzar, torpark (which does a better job and routes your traffic through the onion router to hide traffic patterns), etc. Chrome is disappointingly un-novel and ineffective. The false advertisement makes it downright annoying.

Certificate management: Chrome got it right by using the system's certificate stores, making it easier for administrators to manage certificates. Alot of times certificates are used to identify a property (for example a laptop) or a host (for example a web server), it certainly makes sense for it to be a system feature. Besides, it doesn't make sense to get your trusted root certificates from the internet anyway.



Certificate warning: I am thoroughly disappointed with the lack of prominent invalid certificate warning, it adds to insecurity of internet transactions. It is simply unacceptable.


Accessibility: I wrote about how Firefox2 lacked the page scale feature and how Firefox3 corrected the problem. Chrome simply falls short in accessibility. While it does honor system wide font size settings and does scale pages according to font size, it is done on a per page basis and has to be done every time a page is viewed. There is no way to override page specified font size, unlike Firefox (see below).


Scam: Forget about how Chrome helps prevent scams like IE7's phishing alerts. Chrome itself is a scam. An update service is run without the user knowing, and it stays there even after the browser has been uninstalled.



Verdict: Chrome may be arguably lightweight, but it lacks too many essential features in accessibility, customization, etc. I don't know the plan but I suspect once those features are in place, it will be as heavy as everybody else and be just another uninteresting competing browser in the market.