Google's Chrome Will Not Displace Firefox

Google has recently launched a browser, named "Chrome", which is a first for the company. The idea of Google entering the browser market has been around forever, but now they finally have. Yet despite being a solid piece of software it still fails to measure up to the recent Firefox 3.1 release.

First the good things about Chrome. It offers an "incognito" mode which is near identical to the "InPrivate" mode offered by IE8, it also has the same annoying fact that it must be launched into a separate window.

Chrome also has this funny tab thing going on where each tab can be pulled into it's own window, or switched with existing windows, and pretty much moved wherever you want. This works well, but isn't exactly useful. The reason this can be easily done is that each window is run as a separate process. This helps minimize the damage in crashes, and also prevents a slow tab from holding up a separate quicker tab. Google claims that this helps prevent memory leaks, but really is not the proper way to go about doing so, and in the short term will use up more memory. Furthermore, Firefox has fixed their memory issues with version 3.

The address bar in Chrome is what they are calling the "omnibox" which is a near clone of Firefox's "awesome bar". The default blank page within chrome is a mix between the omnibox and Opera's speed dial start up page. While it displays pages like speed dial does, it does not bases these off of bookmarks, but rather based on page usage history. This could be nice, but not everyone will like it.

The bottom bar is hidden, and only pops up to show link destinations which is all the bar was ever useful for anyhow, so it's removal is no big deal, (although a number of Firefox extensions have found a use for that section of the screen).

The other nice thing about Chrome is the V8 javascript engine which is supposed to be far better than any other offered. Meanwhile the html/css is based off of Apple's WebKit. The interface also looks a bit like Apple's Safari, which while bland is ok. The useless stop loading page icon that browsers have always had has also been removed, and nobody will miss it.

However, despite these positives Chrome is not in position to displace Firefox as the best browser on the market right now. The main reason for this is that it has appeared to have also adopted all of the worst features of IE8.

First all url's have everything except for the root domain grayed out. While I understand that this is theoretically supposed to be an anti-phishing feature, it is simply annoying to look at. Also like IE the traditional File, Edit, View... menu is missing, and unlike IE there is no way to bring it back. Also Chrome feels the need to permanently plaster a star icon next to the addressbar for bookmarks. IE8 and FF3 also do this, but there is no reason to replace the older and simpler right click, add to bookmarks. However the whole bookmark/history process is odd in Chrome, as the neither opens in the traditional side bar. History opens in a new tab, and the bookmarks either pop open in a bookmark bar like the default in Firefox or just kindof hang from the right side. The problem with this is that the Firefox trick of dragging the bookmark toolbar into the main menu tool bar no longer exists.

The lack of the menu also has resulted in a large shortage of options. Almost nothing can be customized, and I have been unable to find an equivalent to Firefox's about:config either. The lack of options is the polar opposite of what made Firefox so popular, and is a serious downside. When Firefox moved the x-out for individual tabs out of the corner, it was no big deal as changing a simple value put it back to how I liked it. There is no way to do that in Chrome.

Also third party cookies are accepted by default. Not even Internet Explorer does that anymore. Apparently their purchase of DoubleClick is even effecting their browser design. Easy to turn off, but like the few settings that do exist, rather hard to find.

While Chrome may be a more useful, and better browser than IE8, the complete lack of customization puts it far behind Firefox still. It looks nice, and does a good job displaying pages, but until it can be more customizable (and support AdBlockPlus) it doesn't come close to taking away any users from Firefox.