TechCrunch, one of the best sites for those interested in anything related to the Internet, internet and computer technology, and so on, published a report by Debra Littlejohn Shinder about Google Chrome. She used Chrome since it was first published, and, after quite some weeks of using, she came to the following ten conclusions:

1. The minimalist interface of Chrome is a plus. It’s handy, and causes you to focus on the websites you’re visiting rather than the browser itself. 

2. Like IE8, Chrome’s tabs are ‘isolated.’ This means that whenever you open a new tab, it starts an entirely new process. If one tab, or one website crashes, the other open tabs do not. That’s, indeed, a great invention. The only problem: this does cost more memory. O, and my own experience has taught me that it’s not a bullet proof system either; Chrome has crashed several times on me, and not merely one tap, but all at once.

3.  More new tab options: very handy with Chrome is that it automatically shows you the websites you visit most frequently when you open a new tab. With Opera you have a similar option but you have to install the nine pages yourself, manually. The system does not do it automatically for you. In IE and Firefox no such option exists; it’s a blank page.

4. Although Chrome doesn’t, by default, give you the option to restore your last browsing session when you open a new tab, you can configure it to automatically open your last session when you start the browser. This is done by clicking the Tools icon at the right of the address bar and selecting Options. On the Basics tab, you can see that the default is to open your home page when the browser starts. Select Restore The Pages That Were Open Last to open up the tabs from your previous browsing session, as shown in Figure C. This is an extremely handy feature of Chrome.

5. ‘One of the coolest features in Chrome, and the one I love most, is its dynamic tabs. Opera is the only other member of the Top Four that has this feature. In these two browsers, if you have several tabs and you decide you’d like one of them to appear in a separate browser window of its own, you just grab the tab title with your cursor and drag it off the current browser window onto the desktop, where it becomes a separate window open to that page. This is very useful when you need to compare two pages side by side. IE doesn’t allow you to drag from the tab at all, and if you try it in Firefox, it creates a shortcut to the page on the desktop instead of opening the page in a window.’

6. ‘Similar to IE 8’s InPrivate mode, Chrome has a feature that lets you prevent pages from being saved in your history and Internet cache and deletes any new cookies after you close the browser window, to cover your tracks concerning your Web browsing habits.’ Personally I don’t quite understand the value of it, unless you’re browsing at work and are not supposed to visit non-work related websites and / or are in the habit of visiting websites your wife doesn’t want you to visit.

7. Here’s a neat idea for Web applications such as Gmail. Now you can create a shortcut on the desktop, in the Start menu, and/or on the Quick Launch bar and open your Web apps without opening the browser. Of course, the app uses the browser, but it opens in a special dedicated window that’s even more streamlined than Chrome’s own interface, so it feels more like you’re using a regular local application rather than the Web. This is actually a very handy feature. You can also do this with Hotmail and other e-mail services.

8. You can change the them of Chrome so it looks better. This is also a very nice tool - it continues to be fast, and minimalist, but styleful nonetheless.

9. Chrome uses (far) less memory space than the other browsers and is quite fast when opened. The author’s own experiences show ‘Chrome to be slightly slower than IE 8 and Opera v.9.52 and slightly faster than Firefox v.3.0.1 in opening most Web sites. Interestingly, Chrome took a long time to open the Gmail site, longer than any of my other browsers. On initial startup, Chrome opens slightly faster than IE 8 and Firefox and about as quickly as Opera. With all four browsers open to the same Web site, with only one tab open, Chrome shows three running processes using a total of 33,440 K of memory; IE 8 shows four running processes using 112,400 K of memory; Firefox shows one running process using 47,680 K of memory; and Opera shows one running process using 42,984 K of memory. Thus Chrome uses less memory than any of the others, with a single page open.’

10. ‘Web browsers are a favorite target of attackers, and it’s unlikely that any browser will ever be completely secure. One day after release of the first public beta, Chrome was found to have a security vulnerability that exploits Webkit and a Java bug. Shortly thereafter, a critical buffer overflow vulnerability was identified by a Vietnamese security company. These vulnerabilities appear to have been patched by Google’s updates.’

Additional thoughts of yours truly:

1. When copying/pasting from Google Chrome into other browsers when writing an article (when quoting someone), Google Chrome changes the lettertype in Wordpress. That is a big problem.

2. Chrome does not allow me to change the ‘timestamp’ on posts, which is an even bigger problem because this stamp allows me to write something early in the morning, but publish it in the evening (without having to run to the computer in the evening and click on ‘publish’).

In short, I like Chrome for browsing, not for working. And I browse because I work.