Google Chrome... Rock ON!!

OK, so this one is for nerds. Or is it?! I'm referring to the launch of Google's new browser Chrome. One would think that a post on a beta launch of a browser would be strictly for nerds, but look at the publicity it generated! I don't remember the last time a browser launch received so much widespread coverage!! The internet of course led the pack with reviews of the new browser as soon as Google launched it on September 2. But articles in the leading newspapers, and even the tabloids!! Here is the article in Mumbai Mirror. And the Pune edition (Pune Mirror) also ran an article reviewing it, where they asked a serious techie to review the browser for its readers! All this within 24 hours of its launch! Well, so I guess this is no longer for nerds or techies exclusively. I guess I'm not really a nerd, but then your's truly was also waiting impatiently for the launch of this browser - in fact stayed awake late in the night waiting for the launch at 11:00 AM PDT! And I've been using it ever since, and to quote the Mac tagline, 'I'm loving it!'. Yes, the browser has a clean UI, and is almost minimalistic on the UI front. But boy, is it fast! Don't know how exactly browser speed is evaluated, but I tried loading a few rich content pages into Chrome and Firefox 3.0.1 and the new Internet Explorer 8 (which also launched less than a week back - aren't the browser wars hotting up!?). Just to be sure that the pages were not cached, I cleared the browser cache in all the cases. And Chrome trumped the other two hands-down! Another cool feature of the browser is the "Omnibox" as Google engineers call it. There is a single bar that serves as the address bar and the search box. Also the auto-suggest entries are displayed in a list in the same box. Google claims that the browser's main feature, or USP, is it's rock-solid stability. This is the first multi-process browser, in that each tab runs as a separate process. So if one tab hangs, then you don't have to close the entire browser, just the particular process can be killed. Oh, that reminds me, the browser has it's own process manager! Oh well, I could go on and on about it. Instead, let me just direct you to the experts - Chrome's official web-site. For those of you interested in knowing a little bit of engineering that goes behind Chrome, you can find it here, in this comic strip. I've been using Firefox for a long while now, but I guess I'd be compelled to switch to Chrome. Chrome simply rocks!! And oh, it is open-source. I can't wait for the next release, and for plug-ins for Chrome. 

Google Chrome.... Rock ON!! 

Update: Here is a look at the market share of Chrome, a week after launch. For those interested for a review of Chrome, you can find a good one here.