On the Mac and OS X Chrome does not disappoint one bit. It is as intuitive and nimble as we’ve grown accustomed to. I don’t know how it behaves on Windows, but it just feels so native and good in OS X. Well done Google. It is FAST! I hope the speed does not degrade over time, but the first couple of hours have been a noticeable speed improvement even compared to Safari.

Stability is key. If you consider that Firefox brings an entire system down if you have more than 10 tabs open at a time. (Okay, I may be exaggerating… but Firefox irks me these days!). Chrome does it well enough. I’m impressed so far. Funny, it loads a new helper for every tab open, so technically it should kill your system, but it just keep going and going. They did it properly, I assume.

If you’re used to Safari and its developer tools, Chrome would feel right at home. Since both are powered by Webkit it uses the same developer tools. Now, here I do miss Firebug, still, Firebug alone won’t make me forgive Firefox!

What also impress me is how intuitive the search functionality behaves. You won’t see a seperate search box like in other browsers. That is because you don’t need it. You simply enter your keywords in the address bar and it defaults to a Google search for your keywords. Very, very slick.

It has been a bloody long wait. I can honestly say, the last time I’ve been this excited about anything was after I installed Leopard. Unfortunately Slow Leopard was a big let down, but since I spend most my day in the browser, Chrome makes it great again! I hope I won’t have to retract most of what I’ve said here. Time will be the true test.

“It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be,”
and
“However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web.”

If one thinks about it, it makes a lot of sense what Google is trying to do. It would (should?) be a far less complex system. The apps you’re used to use will live online and will be rendered and displayed using HTML5. It can be done. It is, IMHO, a good idea. Yes, connectivity and bandwidth issues plays a big role, but we all know thats the two things that is growing and not declining. I can see the potential and the practicality of it. I’m not convinced that it would be adopted on Enterprise level, but it would be something that could work for me and what I would use it for.

There are two things that bothers me:

1. Google Drops A Nuclear Bomb On Microsoft. And It’s Made of Chrome. – Techcrunch
Why would this be seen as a Nuclear Bomb on Microsoft? C’mon Techcrunch, thats a bit sensational wouldn’t you agree? It would be YEARS before big corporates and Windows users would ditch their Microsoft investments for Chrome OS, so I do not think they are sweating yet. In fact, they have more than enough time to build a competitive product IF they are clever. I’m not so sure they are as clever as they are arrogant. Be a bit more realistic and less sensational, please!

2. Why is Google riding this Open Source wave with so much enthusiasm?
Don’t get me wrong, I think it is absolutely fabulous, I’m just wondering “why”? Surely they have or at least can get the best of the best, no? So why make such a big deal about it? I’m not sure. I guess I should be thanking Google instead of questioning their motives, right? If they are so passionate about OSS then why not release everything? Why not Gmail, Google Search, Adsense/Adwords, Google Docs, etc? Maybe I’m just not thinking this strategy of theirs through properly. Maybe they simply don’t pay enough to rope in and retain the badass ninja coders. I cannot really say with conviction, but would love to know.

Kudos to André van Rooyen who saw this coming when the Chrome browser was released when I did not. I’m starting to see the light and catch his drift.

My initial thoughts were “Bloody hell! Brilliant! Just what the world needs. A long awaited email evolution!”. Then I started rationalizing my thoughts and it sunk in. Maybe it is not what we need… Then I got more confused as suddenly it didn’t look like email at all! Then even further, if this replaces email, I’m going offline since I cannot bear the thought of live email…

Yes, it makes sense. It is the next logical step, no? No. It is cool. It will probably get an uptake by early adopters. The determining factor will be how Google promotes and sell this. How they plan to get adoption. By the looks of things, they haven’t given it much thought. In fact, they were so scared of Microsoft’s Bing, they announced it completely prematurely.

Google said they’re releasing it later this year. They said the same of Chrome for Mac. Yet we wait… Open Sourcing it? Brilliant. We can all work for Google for free nowadays! Got to love that strategy. It is a strategy that gets my gears turning…

My current opinion? Bloatware

If you REALLY want to check out what Chromium looks like on Mac or Linux you can download Codeweavers’ Crossover Chromium. (Chromium is the browser Google based Chrome on) Download it here.

It runs. Thats about the only good thing I can say about it. As you can see in the images below, it has a distinct Windows look and feel… Ugly as hell! It behaves a little weird, but I realised that normal Apple keys don’t behave as they should. It behaves like Apple Keys would on Windows. BAD! For example, if I press Alt+i to get a ^ on a letter, it creates a <em> tag. The scrolling is odd. Not as smooth as you’d expect a Mac to be. It is SLOW!

Okay, admittingly, its not Google Chrome in the true sense of the word. I’ll forgive you Google. Oh, and this post was written in Chromium. I think I’ll wait for the REAL McCoy…