It’s been a very busy day today but I figure it’s time for me to throw my $.02 into the ring on my thoughts of the new Google browser, Chrome, that was released today. I’ve just now had a chance to download and install it and I’ll share just a few of my initial reactions.
My first thought that came during the setup process was why in the world do I not have the option to import bookmarks from my Google Bookmarks? I could only specify to import them from Mozilla Firefox or Microsoft Internet Explorer. Do what?
Hand-in-hand with that is why there’s no mention or capability to even mirror the use of the Google Toolbar. I can tell you right now, I use the Google Toolbar so much that I can’t imagine using Google Chrome nearly as much as I would if I had access to the toolbar.
Now that I’ve got that behind me, my general thoughts of the browser is that it’s comfortably clean and simple in layout, what I believe we’ve all come to expect. And it’s quick! Web pages seem to load very quickly in the browser, that’s for sure.
Some of the applications and functionality of tabs bring with them some nice improvements. Being able to drag tabs around to a separate window or regroup them to other windows would be helpful in my opinion. Some of the security steps that Google Chrome does to maintain stability in the browser also looks like a great improvement.
Aside from those items, there’s nothing really that blows me away or colors me impressed. It’s a nice, clean, fast browser. But it’s missing far too much that I’ve come to expect from my browser for me to switch it as my default browser.
I’d think higher integration with maps, Google toolbar, search and Gmail just seems like obvious gaps to me. I also think it would be a perfect browser that could have been released for mobile phones.
A comment from one of my friends was that it’s still “in beta” so I shouldn’t expect much. I replied that Gmail is still in beta too, but it’s pretty darn refined and useful for email at this point.