Google made their new Chrome browser available for download on Tuesday at http://www.google.com/chrome . It's a two stage install - you download a small setup package off the site which then downloads the rest of the install after you've opened it. All standard stuff, although it's the kind of approach normally used for 50MB+ downloads, not little 7MB packs like this.

So far I've installed this first beta on two machines, a brand new Vista laptop and an aging XP desktop. I'd already got Mozilla Firefox installed on both machines, so during the Chrome install it asked whether it could import all of my various Firefox bookmarks, favorites etc. to get me started off. The laptop had little or nothing to copy over so that bit of the process finished in a blink and I had Chrome up and running in a matter of seconds.

The XP machine was a different matter however...

The copy of Firefox I have on this one has a large number of bookmarks and passwords saved and I also made the mistake of not clearing the browser history before I started the new install. That was the stopper on my first run as the process stalled on importing the browser history, and then crashed out altogether, displaying the usual XP debug panel on the way.

OK, no big deal, I tried again. Not having saved the ChromeSetup.exe package from the first attempt, I went back to the download page and went through the EULA verification again, but Google was having none of it - I just got a standard rotating 'wait' graphic.

Was this IP related i.e. no more than one download in any one session? I didn't want to wait to find out so I reconnected and tried again. No problem this time and after a thorough CCleaner run, I reinstalled from the now-saved setup file.

The process slowed to a halt again when importing the now-reduced Firefox data, but at least it finished this time.

First impressions on the XP install are pretty much the same as on Vista although, as you'd expect, marginally not as pretty to look at. So, having read all the goodies from the Chrome comic book, how does the reality live up to the initial buzz?:-

* The program is very much quicker to load initially than either Internet Explorer or Firefox, like a second or two compared to the eternity you get with Firefox in particular.

* As you'd expect, because they're new processes, new tabs do not load as fast as in Firefox, although they are quicker than in IE with all the verbiage Microsoft insist on putting into each new tabbed page

* Again, as you'd expect, the page rendering is identical to Firefox and streets ahead of IE, which remains the single biggest reason why I gave up using the Microsoft offering - I like to read what's on the screen, not have to interpret it through a foggy haze

* The install on the XP desktop safely copied across the bookmarks but was only one third successful on the passwords - it copied across the passworded sites, but not the usernames OR the passwords! Gotta be honest - with the number of passwords I've got saved that's going to be a major exercise and will be one of the two reasons why I'm carrying on with Firefox pro tem (the other being the plugins). The Vista laptop install copied across sites, usernames and passwords without a problem.

* Javascript does load faster, as promised, and the most visible improvement seems to be with YouTube embedded videos where the opening screens appear in about the same time as similarly sized gifs or jpegs.

* I've still managed to crash and burn on certain pages but, wonder of wonders, only that tab closes - the rest stay up and working, just as Google stated they would. For those of us faced with the delay grind of constantly restarting Firefox, this is BIG!  


These are just first observations and I will be returning to the subject of Google's first browser as I use it more but the first impression is that this is everything that the company said it would be. The install obviously needs some work, but this is a beta after all and that's the least kind of problem you could expect.

Bottom line, if you put Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera all alongside each other, IE Safari and Opera have lost any reason to exist in their current form, and even Firefox, with its aversion to scripts, is living on borrowed time. Chrome really is that good.