My first post in English. Yes! Google Chrome Beta is officially available hours ago (it is now 2.20 AM WIB here (19.20 GMT)). I am running on Windows Vista and having give it a try, now I want to write about my first time experience using Chrome.

My thought when I heard about Chrome is : why does we need another browser? There are bunch of browsers out there already. If it is intended to be open-source answer for Microsoft Internet Explorer, again, what’s wrong with Firefox? Honestly, I was also skeptical when they said Chrome is based on Webkit engine, the same engine that is used by Safari. But they prove me wrong.

The Speed Demon

The first thing I notice about Chrome is : it is goddamn fast. There was very little lag when you open a page. I am using Opera as my primary browser. And yes, Opera was the fastest browser on earth. Chrome is noticably faster than Opera, which means also faster than Firefox and Internet Explorer respectively.

Because of its simplicity, the main area looks very wide, almost full-screen. Unfortunately the zoom feature is not as good as what Opera already has for years. Besides, it also disappoints me in many ways : my scroll button is not working, I cannot find my status bar, I cannot go back to my homepage on one-click, etc. etc. etc.

Chrome treats each tab as a separated process, which means it’s good. You can kill any tabs just by ending its process using Windows Task Manager. But the problem is it uses more RAM than any other browsers on Milky Way. I openned four pages (Digg, Gmail, Gizmodo, ComputerWorld) and it takes 110 MB of RAM!

When you open a tab, it shows you nine last visitted pages sites. The interface of this tab looks like Opera’s speed dial, but serves a bit different purposes. And, yes, it is better.

The next thing I did is trying to download a dozen of files. The built-in Download Manager looks like crap. Literally. I can hardly see the progress bar or current download speed. It just shows number of bytes. When a download is accidentally interrupted, I cannot even find a resume button. Also it does not show some important download properties, such as : what the heck was the URL I downloaded the file from. Sadly, that means I have to start over.

Chrome also offers Incognito Window, that is already available for Firefox as a plugin. Click on a link and select "Open Link In Incognito Windows". If you ask me, it is a porn-mode.

Future of Chrome

Judging from what I see, Google is right. Chrome looks damn simple. I was a bit skeptical that it even can make a quick impact on web-browser market share.

My concern about Chrome is its lacking features. It is insanely fast. But it looks like that we have agreed to trade features for speed.

Since Google is a big-name company, I have faith that they are capable on providing massive improvements over Chrome. And I will be happy to see another major player in browser market.

Should Chrome be successful, it will be a harder blow for Mozilla than for Microsoft. Why? Because it is those geeks using Firefox that brave enough to jump to Chrome. Most Internet Explorer users prefer browsing by default.

Chrome has promising future. But, for now, I think I will stick to Opera.