Loading ...Google Chrome versus Firefox
First, let’s meet Google Chrome in the flesh, now that is has been released.
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- Google Chrome main window features a slick minimalistic theme that blends best with Google applications.
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- Chrome can import settings from Firefox and Internet Explorer including bookmarks, search engines, saved passwords and history.
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- Chrome's task manager provides an easy way to spot which tab is using the most bandwidth, CPU, and memory. Thanks to its multiprocess architecture you can discard tabs and have all resources back.
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- Instead of a blank screen you get a search bar, most recently visited pages and most recent bookmarks.
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- Chrome's download manager has a very attractive and, again, simple design.
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- A download icon is added to all tabs where a download is taking place.
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- Find in page functionality is activated pressing Ctrl + F.
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- Google Chrome save password confirmation info bar.
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- Popups are minimized and stacked in the lower right corner. You can drag them to show the blocked window.
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- You can save any web application as a shortcut to Windows Quick Launch toolbar, the desktop and the Start menu.
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- Incognito is a private space where all traces of your session are deleted as you leave the mode and get back to normal browsing.
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- Following its minimalist approach, Google Chrome options dialog is brief and limited to the some very basic options.
To keep it as short as possible, let’s see what Chrome has that Firefox users may miss.
I would say the greatest advantage of Chrome over Firefox is its ability to handle tabs in independent processes which means a browser or plugin bug, or an incorrectly coded web page can’t take down the whole browser, but just that tab or plugin alone. This architecture also enables the cool task manager which as noted by John Resig, lets once and for all be able to know whether it is the browser or a badly coded web site the responsible for a slow down.
There is a noticeable memory overhead but what’s the point of having 1 GB or 2 GB of RAM if you’re going to care about 200 or 300MB. Slim is always good, but snappy is even better.
Then there is the really slick theme: no main menu, the status bar is overlaid at the bottom when needed, just like the find bar; there is no search bar which is integrated with the location bar, it has a new tab button, it has cool animations when accessing the bookmarks toolbar or moving tabs which definitely helps feel the browser more responsive.
Its private mode, Incognito, sounds like a nice to have rather than a must have feature for me, but with its implementation along with Microsoft’s and Apple’s, its definitely becoming a standard feature just like antiphishing protection.
It scores a 79/100 in the Acid 3 test (ahead of Firefox 3 (75/100) and behind Firefox 3.1 nightlies (85/100)). In the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark, it clearly beats Firefox 3.0.1: 3700ms vs 5100ms in my Dell Inspiron 6400 (2GHz Centrino Duo, 2GB RAM).
Another positive thing is what Google didn’t do: they haven’t stuffed it with Google applications integration: there is no Gmail integration (or any other web mail service), Google Reader, Google Docs, Gtalk, etc. Google is of course the default search engine but you can easily change it to any other provider. Of course this is just a beta, and Google integration may be already in the plans, but it’s good to know that there is Chromium, the open source project from where Chrome is derived, so developers will be able to modify it as needed.
What Chrome is missing from Firefox? Well, that’s a much longer list that of course starts with the lack of extensibility in the sense Firefox provides it: a way to make the browser do whatever you can imagine, to the point of making it a completely different application like FireFTP or Pencil do.
As said before, I think Google will try to bundle Google Gadgets and present it as the way of customizing the browser, but of course it would be as limited as developers found when Apple announced the same for the first iPhone.
What else? Hold tight. In no particular order: there is no tab overflow handling, no tagging or smart bookmarks handling, no download resume between sessions, no multiple dictionary support, no toolbar customization beyond hiding the Home button and the bookmarks toolbar, the bookmarks toolbar is only accessible via Ctrl + B, no kind of web feeds support, no native video/audio support, no discontinuous selection option, no page printing options, etc.
The list goes on but since it’s a beta we can expect to see some of these features added, completed or corrected before the final release. Or not. This is Google and the final release may never come so I think if Google doesn’t provide a roadmap soon (ha!), we can treat (and beat) this as Chrome 1.0.
Conclusion
I like Google Chrome, and I believe it will be able to take a significant slice of the browsers market pie, hopefully mostly at the expense of Internet Explorer, but it remains to be seen.
While I don’t find it strong enough to beat with Firefox, it is definitely a yummy option for the hundreds of millions of Google users who will be prompted to install it through a web search results page, or any of the several Google products. Which at this point in time I think is fine. The web only benefits of more and more competition but my concern in the long term is: where do Google stop?
After all Google is a public company, and all its good public benefit intentions are second to those of their shareholders at best.
Features aside (they can always be copied, even extensibility) the main difference between Chrome and Firefox, both being open source projects, is what company stands behind and their mission. Mozilla is a public benefit organization, cares about the Internet and the Internet alone, which as noble, good and idealistic as it sounds, I still have to see any evidence that proves the opposite.
It has struggled in the past for sticking to its mission. Today it enjoys success for the exact same reason, in large part because of a business partner like Google, which is not the same as saying that Mozilla would die without Google: be sure there is no lack of companies interested in reaching 200 million users, daily.
I’m glad to welcome new products, specially products as good as Chrome.
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September 3rd, 2008 at 10:34 am
> no closed tab recovery
Open any tab, Close it , click on the new tab button , notice
” Recently closed tabs “
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Percy CabelloSeptember 8th, 2008 at 12:06 am
You’re right. I’ve updated the article, thanks!
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September 3rd, 2008 at 10:45 am
As far as I can tell from the screenshots, the download manager will open in a tab by default. I think this is a feature Firefox should definitely have. At the moment there are no extensions (officially) updated for 3.0 that provide this tweak.
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NitroOctober 11th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
No…. Chromes default download manager is really neat. What happens, when you click to download something and tell Chrome which file to put the download in…. A little on-screen(opens at the bottom of the window in the same page as where you clicked to download) slim & sleek box slides up to the bottom of the page and displays your downloads from left to right. But if you want to see a more detailed version of your downloads, you can go to options(tool symbol) and then go to downloads or press ctrl+j and it will bring up a simple downloads tab.
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September 3rd, 2008 at 11:11 am
2 things that Firefox should have done years ago :
- f*****g block popups. All popups. Why 5 out of 10 popup are not blocked with the so called “popup blocker” of firefox ??? Is that so difficult to do ?
- the not so awesome bar is a piece of s***t, why does it keep trying to display url like “https://mail.google.com/mail/?auth=DQAAAJMAAADAB4CqzN4uF1K6yjg-yaY5PR24O8BGXst_YfT-1yEuxMdP8XuErp3Rhq1p1jfbd9jb9Uf8XmFYvtrLIbfTa62fFWkUk_LHgPFKXKB61hpCfkJYNkOyL7k71J4B0IwhXNPqXYZDb9OAY3iQFO_cT2k1j3uTYfBlOTsUKMRMx6etC-SF-oh2Z-T6X6yQi6Wwik5×6NH_FEEkBCAqZZfIuz67&gausr=xxxx%40gmail.com&zx=p7re348lphr1″ ??? Am I suppose to know where it goes ?
Also, firefox 3 with basic theme is ugly.
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September 3rd, 2008 at 12:10 pm
I love what I see in chrome. But I won’t be using it.
I really hope you didn’t write this article in Chrome, because if you did, Google now owns the copyright.
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September 3rd, 2008 at 6:11 pm
I really wanted to use Google Chrome, but it won’t let me save bookmarks to my social bookmarking site, where I keep all my bookmarks since I regularly use more than 1 computer. Then, I read on slashdot this morning that Chrome’s EULA says “By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.” …and no, that doesn’t work for me and I won’t encourage anyone to use it because of that.
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September 3rd, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Great work as always Percy.
Chrome will not be the death of Firefox so people can stop freaking out.
A lot of good can come from this and things will settle down after the initial shock wave subsides.
@ gxg, the following doesn’t display the download manager by default in a tab, it simply opens it in a tab but perhaps you can kick it around a bit to see if you can tweak it to get it to do what you want.
My downloads are cleared automatically so I have no need for such a feature.
chrome://mozapps/content/downloads/downloads.xul
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September 3rd, 2008 at 10:11 pm
“no discontinuous selection option, no page printing options, etc.”
sorry for my language but: the “selection printing” in Firefox sucks ( ridden of infamous and very old bugs ). If you wan’t me to send some pages links to prove my point, just tell me.
and regarding selection printing, Firefox team took a “anti-common-sense” approach: instead of provide a contextual menu “print selectio” when the user right-click in the selection, they decide to hide the “print selection” feature in a lost check box in a lost tab in a lost print configuration dialog.
Why to wait Google to do the right UI things or fix fundamental bugs as the print selection problem? don’t you know that we users actually need to *print* web pages and we need some kind of fidelity in the printed page and not a blank one ?
Thanks for hearing
orlando
firefox user since 2004
( and still using it )
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September 5th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Chrome certainly has the potential to grab a nice chunk of the market and I can see it replacing Internet Explorer as a simple, entry-level browser for beginners. But I honestly don’t think power users can switch to Chrome. The options dialog looks like a joke, and the lack of independently-developed extensions means that you’re stuck with whatever features Google developers decide are good for you, which sucks a lot. As long as it’s a product of a corporation and not a community, it will never beat Firefox in terms of quality and innovation.
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September 6th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Found that Chrome doesn’t work well with FB. Doesn’t load the part where it shows how many mutual friends you have with so and so person when approving them
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September 7th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Chrome’s bookmark management seems pretty limited. Not that Firefox 3’s bookmark management is anything to write home about, regressing from Firefox 2….
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September 8th, 2008 at 8:08 am
What is going on with Chrome’s PDF handling? Save only? Is there really no extension for viewing in the window?
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September 16th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
I want to try it but I’m scared, has anyone ever tried to get rid of this program? does it try and take over the computer like Adobe or does the uninstall feature actually remove everything. I definitely don’t like the sound of that part in the EULA that Devon mentioned. I imagine Pixxar wouldn’t have agreed to that if the software they used had that in the EULA. I think it’ll be a while before I try it on any computer other than my gaming computer (it’s formatted often anyway).
I do like the Tabs being handled in independent processes. that’s pretty slick if it works the way they hope, Windows (especially Vista) could use something that works that actually prevents loss of our work.
I’ll probably try it this weekend but I would have to pretty impressed to switch from Firefox though.
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September 19th, 2008 at 5:14 am
GET YOUR FACTS UPDATED. That part of the EULA hasn’t existed since 4 Sep 08. Google amended it to say
“You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services.”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/03/google_chrome_eula_sucks/
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DirkSeptember 19th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Oh, ok, thanks, that helps. I really haven’t had much time to look into these things lately. I’ll give it a try when I get the time. :-)
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September 20th, 2008 at 7:19 am
Nice article. I tried Google Chrome, but didn’t like it that much, have uninstalled it. FireFox any day!
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September 25th, 2008 at 11:30 am
It was fun and exciting using Chrome for a little while, and man, is it fast! But it is so lacking in customizable features that it is actually annoying to work with after a while. Call it minimilistic if you want, but right now it just feels kind of dumbed down, like those email only machines you’d buy for your grandma. I can see my kid using this, but for real world power users, I’ll stick to Firefox.
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September 29th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
But, How to integrate with download manager, So I can download faster.
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October 2nd, 2008 at 9:16 am
Oh yeaaaah! Long live to google chrome, best web explorer ever created! :)
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October 23rd, 2008 at 12:18 pm
I just finished pimping my computer with all the google goodies like google chrome and the google desktop and I must say that I am In awe… well mabe thats too deep, But I am very impressed with its overall cohesiveness . my mother always has to look for IE but now she can type whatever she is looking for in the google search bar on my desktop, and find what she needs. I still like firefox b/c you can customize the hell out of it. But we all know how it can sometimes lag, and crash. with google chrome, and google accelerator, I am having a very good experience on the computer.
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October 25th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Google has changed the EULA for Google Chrome a very long time ago and when it gets add-ons in the near future, it will be the best web browser
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November 1st, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Looks like they copied a lot of ideas from Firefox, and then tried to innovate on top of it. Firefox is good enough for me and soon enough it will catch up with the best Google has to offer. I don’t see any compelling reason to switch and contribute to Google’s monopoly.
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November 3rd, 2008 at 2:19 pm
i think that google-chrome is good but it needs more work it has potential.The scrolling for me in google-chrome is slow.
For now mozila is the best.
for now :)
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November 12th, 2008 at 9:30 am
Firstly, the notion that Chrome is an inferior browser because there is less community support right now is ridiculous. The thing was just released!!! Give it time! Check Google Sidebar…. that thing has TONS of third party developed gadgets. Trust me, Chrome will develop a community that may even rival Mozilla’s one day.
Secondly, at this point, the only compelling reason one would have to switch from Firefox to Chrome, is the fact that Chrome is far more secure and is built better “under the hood”. The idea of having each tab utilize it’s own process is amazingly innovative, and their rebuilding of the Java VM is nothing sort of amazing. Chrome is, from a techie standpoint, a far superior browser. It’s more secure, and more efficient. If Chrome is able to catch up to Firefox in terms of customization, which is currently where Firefox shines, it will by far surpass it.
That’s yet to be seen, though if they will do so….
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November 27th, 2008 at 11:51 am
I’m long-time user of Firefox, and when I know about Google Chrome. I happened to prefer it over Firefox.
GOOGLE CHROME FOR THUMBS UP!!
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