It is much faster at loading than Firefox. I'd say around 1/3 of the startup time. Actual page load is comparable, it seems. I'd like to see some benchmarks about just how fast it is in comparison to other browsers. Of course, it'll all be different in a Linux environment...
It seems to be very buggy. After first opening it, I just went around trying out its features. The porn window incognito window decided that it wanted to continuously load a page a few times per second. I closed it and opened a new one, and it was fixed. Also, the first cookie that the browser tried to set erred out, but set correctly the second time.
Chrome has some very interesting things which I like about it:
- The title bar reminds me of the Tango Window Experiments, but I wished there was a way it could keep your theme (at least on Linux).
- The interface is extremely lightweight. There's no clutter like there always is on a fresh Firefox install.
- Browser windows open in the browser. At least, for the most part. Things like history and downloads all open in a new tab, rather than a popup or a sidebar. Things seem to be very homogeneous.
With all that said, it does have its downsides. For starters, there is no status bar. Instead, tooltips pop up in the lower left telling you the location of the link you're hovering over. Options and settings are not well organized at all; they're just grouped together into "basics," "minor tweaks," and "under the hood."
Overall, it's a very good program. It seems very usable (as in, good for end users), but probably not the choice for most seasoned computer veterans. I'd like to see what Google can do with a browser and a lot of user input, however. I'm sure they can come up with some really amazing things.
