Google's Chrome 2.0 Is underwhelming
- — 26 May, 2009 01:20
Google's upgrade of Chrome to 2.0 is exceedingly underwhelming --- there's so little new that if you blinked you'd miss the changes. It's baffling that a company that keeps fully featured software like Gmail in beta for years has jumped to 2.0 for a browser with so little to offer.
After the upgrade, you won't notice a change in Chrome at all --- it looks just like the previous version, and largely behaves like it as well. There are a few little tweaks, though, such as a full screen mode available via the F11 key.
There's also a form filler for filling in Web forms, something other browsers have had since the Dark Ages. You can also remove thumbnails from the "New Tab" pages that launch whenever you open a new tab. And you can zoom better.
The only substantial change is speed. Google claims that the new Chrome is 30% faster than the previous version, and I can believe it. It loads pages lightning fast.
But there's more to browsing the Web than fast-loading pages. That's where Chrome 2.0 is still far inferior to Firefox and Internet Explorer.
It's hard to understand Google's plans for Chrome, because it's so bare-bones that it will never gain significant market share. It may be, though, that Google considers its browser little more than a front end for Web-based applications such as Gmail or Google Docs, and figures that the applications themselves, not the browser, is where most functionality will reside. But the ubiquitous cloud-based world is still far away, and until then, Chrome will languish.
Comments
Anonymous
1
What do you, use the internet for?
From a heavy internet users perspective Google Chrome offers me EVERYTHING i could ever want. More internet and less crap i will never use. Google has created this bare bones internet browser beacuse they recognises that starting from scratch is needed from time to time. You can get so lost in the clutter of FF and IE that your internet experience is just crummy.
I would agree with you that the additional features come from googles other tools which work perfectly as well. I'm glad that not much has changed. The only benefit you will get from IE is that every webpage will load on it. Which is something yet to happen on Chrome but strangely enough the only webpages i have encountered problems on are microsoft ones??? Go figure.
If you want a browser with lots of clutter but is still fast use FF.