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Google, usually the internet giant who can push their way into any market, has recently bundled their Chrome browser with Real Player. I found it quite amusing that Google would have to team up with another piece of software to try and gain market share but the browser war is a different game.
Google may have entered a game they can't play in very easily when they decided to launch Chrome late last year. The Chrome browser was launched with so much hype and marketing that it should have shot to #1 in the market within its first month of being released. However, Google failed to realize one thing about the browsers they were attempting to overtake, the other browsers are, for lack of a fancier word, BETTER than Chrome.
Google has quite a ways to go with Chrome as it doesn't really do anything my current browsers can't do. It has the neat "Stats for Nerds" feature, but all that does is show that Chrome is a memory and CPU hog, especially after the browser has been running for a while. I'm flattered Google would tell on Chrome this way, but "Task Manager"/"Stats for Nerds" is about it as far as features other browsers do include when they are shipped. Tabs ... Firefox mastered tabs a while back and they are still good at it with Firefox 3. Unfortunately, Chrome begins to behave like Internet Explorer after it has been running for a while and you open a new tab. When opening a new tab in a long running Chrome session, you get a Blank page for seconds, and then finally you get your completed tab. The only difference between Chrome and Internet Explorer is that Internet Explorer displays "Connecting..." for a few seconds in addition to a blank page.
Speed ... Chrome is no match for Firefox but is faster than Internet Explorer. Flexibility ... options and customizations were few and far between. So the hopes of speeding the browser up with tweaks is out of the question. And now the browser is being bundled with Real Player, another product that can't compare to its stiffest competition, Winamp and VNC Media Player, won't help much. Maybe Google will be happy with 2nd or 3rd place in the browser war.
| Browser Grades (Lowest Number is Better) |
|
Chrome |
FireFox 3 |
IE 7 |
Opera 9.6 |
Safari 3 |
| Memory Usage
| 4 |
5 |
1 |
3 |
5 |
| CPU Usage
| 3 |
1 |
4 |
2 |
5 |
| Speed (New Tab)
| 3 |
1 |
4 |
2 |
5 |
| Speed (Browsing)
| 2 |
1 |
4 |
2 |
5 |
| Grade (in relation to competition)
| 3 |
1 |
4 |
2 |
5 |
Our config: Windows XP, 4GB RAM, AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+, same 5 tabs open (gmail.com, msn.com, opera.com, apple.com, mozilla.org/firefox), browsers open for 45 minutes. Note, the gmail.com seemed to run EVERY browser's memory and CPU usage up after a while. |
