Ask Melvin Ng

Google just released their latest browser to challenge the dominance of Internet Explorer and Firefox.

I can see that Internet Explorer’s position as the main browser of choice has slowly been eroded by Firefox’s dominance, and now with the launch of Google Chrome, I think the end is nigh for IE. Sorry guys but I’m not a huge fan of IE as I find it bulky and slow.

Forget about IE, between Google Chrome (GC) and Firefox (FF), it shares quite a lot of similarity in terms of speed, simplicity and functionality.

However, keep in mind that GC is still in BETA, and that means there will be many more improvements to come (hopefully…crossing my fingers).

The few cool features which I liked are:

• import settings - if you’ve been using Firefox, it is able to import all your bookmarks and passwords seamlessly into GC.
• whenever you open a new tab, on the right side of the screen, you’ll have your last few visited and bookmarked pages.
• the crash control feature, if it really works, would be awesome. Have yet to test proof it yet but what it means is this, if for any reason one of the tab is causing your browser to crash, in IE or FF, generally you’ll have to close off the entire browser, but over in GC, you don’t have to because each tab operates independently. The problem will only affect the respective tab only.
• the Incognito mode, if you ever find yourself wanting to browse certain sites without wanting to leave a trail, this mode would be cool as it will not leave any ‘footprints’ so to speak. I leave it to your imagination…

That aside, I do find these few things which I didn’t like:

• that it came from Google. I think they dominate too much to the detriment of users’ privacy.
• I just don’t like the favicon that came with it. It gave me the feeling of Windows Media Player.
• it’s still new, so some of my favorite apps and plugins in FF is still not compatible yet, such as Roboform and SEO Quake.

Until and unless GC works with Roboform and SEO Quake, I guess I will only be test driving it instead of seriously considering to change it as my default browser.

You can check it out over here: Google Chrome

Tagged with: firefox • google • google chrome • internet browser • internet explorer