Time Immortal

Google released their new browser, Google Chrome, this week. It’s still in beta, but they’re touting it as a radical rethinking of the concept of an internet browser. And I suppose, in some ways, it is that.

I’ve been testing it for a few days, using it almost exclusively to browse the Web, and to blog. And there’s a lot I like about it. It is certainly speedy, and I find it does very well when asked to render pages with a high amount of media content. The interface took a day or so to get used to, but was fairly straightforward once I got used to it. I like that it treats each tab as a unique process (although it’s still possible to kill Chrome from the Windows Task Manager by targeting only one ‘chrome.exe’ process).

But I think, for now, that I’ll stick with Firefox, at least for my workaday browsing needs. At home, I’ve switched over to Chrome, and will probably a bit more frequently at that end. But for my needs at work, Firefox 3 is just a bit better-suited to the job at hand. Maybe it’s just the IT guy in me, but I frankly don’t trust Chrome yet; I’m not sure it’s as secure as Google claims it is. Also, I trust Firefox’s SSL support a little more at present.

Once it’s out of beta, though, I get the feeling that Chrome is going to be a force. It’s only been out for a week, and already about 2% of my traffic is from people using it. That doesn’t sound like much…until you consider the fact that three days ago, nobody was using Chrome at all.

Update: Of course, not all is roses. Edward Champion points out that writers should pause before switching to Chrome, as Chrome’s EULA gave Google the right to excerpt, modify, and/or re-print (for their own purposes) any content submitted through the use of the Chrome browser…without the original author generating any royalties from it.

So I won’t be using Chrome for blogging purposes any time soon. And yes, I realize that Google has modified the EULA to remove the offending clause. Still, the IT guy in me thinks that “safe” is better than “sorry” under most experimental conditions.