By Bob Rankin
Should You Switch to Chrome?
Google introduced its Chrome Web browser in December, 2008. As of October, 2011, Chrome was the third most-used Web browser, with a 25 per cent worldwide market share. And according to StatCounter, it’s on the verge of taking over the #2 spot from Firefox within weeks. Meanwhile, Internet Explorer’s market share has dipped from 50% to 40% in the past years, and some are predicting that Chrome’s current growth trajectory will put it in the top spot by the middle of 2012.
Chrome is strikingly different from its two major competitors, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. The latter two browsers have become feature-bloated, according to many users. Chrome has a minimalist feel; it doesn’t even support RSS feeds. The emphasis in Chrome is on speed, simplicity, and security. Chrome runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms. The most recent version can be downloaded here.
Chrome may have had a decisive edge in speed when it first appeared. But that advantage has been narrowed in recent rounds of the browser wars. Different benchmark tests give different rankings, particularly when a test is designed by the developer of one of the browsers being tested. But a wide variety of reviews suggest that Chrome and Firefox are about tied in speed, and that IE is only an insignificant step behind them. See my related article Which Browser is Fastest? for some additional information on browser speed testing.
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This excerpt is shared with permission from Bob Rankin.
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