Chrome Browser Review

Chrome installed without a hitch on my laptop, which runs Vista.  My initial thoughts on the program are that it's clean, simple and fast. 

I've run through the traditional pages, AOL, CNN, Google Maps, Mapquest, Gmail, Facebook, Digg, well you get the point.  

The browser is clean and simple like the google home page and fast.  The tabbed interface is simple to use but not revolutionary.  Did I mention that the browser is fast. The most notable change is the speed by which pages will load.  I did most of my testing over a Verizon Air Card and the page load time is noticible over Firefox and just plain blows IE 7 away.  

There are some vulnerabilities that have been reported with Chrome, but they are the same vulnerabilities that were found with FireFox so it should not take Google long to come out with a Patch.  

The question that comes to mind is that while the browser is incredibly fast, there are no add-ons developed for it.  So the stripped down browser has little overhead which can account for its speed.  Since the browser is open source, then add-ons run the risk of slowing the browser down.  Hopefully I am wrong. 

Since this is an ECM blog, I did also test the browser with a leading ECM package, Livelink.  The Livelink ECM package is a browser based system and can load very slowly in a browser.  The Chrome browser is different.  The Livelink ECM pages load faster than I have ever seen in a browser.  The Chrome browser appears to not repaint the entire page, but only the necessary sections of the page.  So not only does the initial page load faster than any browser, but the subsequent navigation pages load even faster. 

In general, corporations should take a close look at Chrome if you are a Livelink customer. Once Google's browser has been vetted by the industry and the security holes plugged this browser should be seriously considered.