- Price: Free
- Website: www.google.com/chrome
- Version we tested: 3.0.195.33
- Good points: Highest score overall. Equal highest performance score. Excellent ease of use. Small footprint for memory usage. Supports themes/skins.
- But: Doesn’t support ad filtering by default. No third-party add-ons. No mobile version.
New kid on the block is Google's Chrome open source browser, released in late 2008. Chrome's emphasis is on speed, simplicity and style, using layout themes and an uncluttered look.
Like Safari, Chrome uses the open source WebKit rendering engine originally developed as KHTML under Linux and later adopted by Apple. It also borrows ideas from other open source projects and even from Firefox in a bid to bring the best features together in one browser. It also comes in beta versions for Linux and Mac, and Google has opened Chrome to developers to create third-party extensions but none are available yet at the time of writing.
One of Chrome’s most notable features is its stability - each tab works independently, so if one crashes, the others don’t go down with it. Another is the Omnibox - Chrome’s address bar that doubles as a search box. It also has an “incognito” mode for private browsing. Annoyingly Chrome doesn’t have a print preview feature, which is essential for printing certain browser pages and avoiding wasted ink and paper.
Chrome shouldn’t be confused with Google’s similarly named new open source PC operating system, Google Chrome OS, which is designed to work exclusively with web programs and intended for devices such as netbooks.
See the test results for more details of Chrome's performance and features.
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