Well, I had to say something eventually, didn’t I?

Google’s alledged accidental launch of the new webkit-based browser has all the hallmarks of guerilla marketing, but let’s not hold that against it. I downloaded Chrome on it’s day of release, installed it and was thoroughly non-plussed. Nothing much I hadn’t seen before – pretty, granted, but that was about it.

However, after a week or two of playing with Chrome, it does seem to start up faster than virtually any other browser, renders pages quickly and works well on widescreen displays – you don’t feel so height-constrained as very little screen real estate is stolen by menu bars, address bars and the like.

It’s compatibility with plugins such as Shockwave is great, and the ‘incognito’ mode is great for logging in to two Google accounts at once. Running each page as a seperate process is also kinda cool – meaning that if one page dies, the whole browser (or OS in the case of IE) isn’t taken down with it!

Biggest issue as far as I can see is the lack of Firefox-style plugin support – specifically for ad blocking and bookmark sync. As a confirmed del.icio.us and Foxmarks junkie, THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! OK, maybe not – but support for Google Bookmarks is rumoured for the next iteration.

Get it here : http://www.google.com/chrome