Google Has A Web Browser

It's official, Google Chrome has been released, and it's a pretty nice effort from what I've seen so far.  You can tell just from the way things render that it has strong ties to Safari, and you can also tell there is some Firefox influence.  Beyond that though, I was caught off guard when I found they borrowed Opera's speed dial, but applied it to your most visited sites automatically, saving you the trouble of setting it up.

Chrome transferred my settings over from Firefox without a hitch, which is especially nice because I don't like having to rack my brain for those passwords I have a hard time remembering.  Immediately you see that there is a bookmark bar, but it is detached from everything.

This is by default, and you can access the settings to attach it under the URL bar like it is in Firefox.

To the right of the URL bar, are two drop down menus for controlling the current page, and customizing/controlling Google Chrome.

There is also a spot to look at your Google Gears settings.

Of course, we all want to be assured that our web sites still look like we expect them too, and for the most part, it's flawless.

I discovered that when you click the close button on the last tab remaining, it will close Chrome rather than leaving you with a blank page.  When I fired it back up again, I noticed that in addition to Chrome's version of speed dial, it also has a small list of recently closed tabs.

We've also heard about Google setting up the tabs so if something goes wrong in one of them, the whole browser doesn't crash.  To help observe the tabs, we are given a task manager.

Google is also putting a smile on the faces of geeks everywhere, with more detailed stats for nerds.

They even take it one step further, showing the stats for other browsers you have running.  This is not a complete list though, as I had IE7 (x64) and Flock running, and they weren't listed.

One item puzzled me for a bit, as I didn't see a search bar in the top right corner, as I have become so accustomed to using.  Not to worry though, just type in your search in the URL bar, and you're set.  It seems so obvious now, as it's a great way to help keep the look clean.

This looks very promising, as the only glitch I have been able to find thus far is a quirk in Typepad, as it doesn't show the tab for editing HTML in my posts.  I suspect that Google will take care of issues quickly, and if it isn't difficult for developers to port their addons to Chrome, or better yet, make it fully compatible with all of the addons for Firefox, this could be a powerhouse browser within a year.  But for now, it looks to be completely fine for casual browsing.

Download Google Chrome for a closer look.  Sorry, only available for Windows at the moment.