Jump To >> Google Chrome Browser - Review

Hooray! Google released its new browser - Google Chrome - today & I'm sure a lot of y'all have already downloaded it & having fun playing with it. After all, how often do we get a new browser come on the scene. Well, even if there were, most wouldn't even care, but with Google it's a little different. Enuff said, I downloaded Google Chrome a little while ago & I'm ready to try it out.

Benchmarking Pre-requisites -

In this article we'll be doing some very basic benchmarking for Google Chrome alongside some leading browsers. For this article, I'll simply use the Windows Task Manager to see the processing footprint(memory usage). We'll compare these for Google Chrome with other leading browsers -

• Mozilla Firefox
• Internet Explorer - Microsoft
• Opera

We'll be performing our tests on the following operating systems

• Windows XP
• Windows Vista

(Sadly, at this time Google Chrome is not available for Mac OS or Linux systems)

I'll also provide a list of gripes I have with Google Chrome.

Be aware that I just downloaded Google Chrome & I'm simply logging my experience while I'm playing with it.

For our benchmarking we'll be testing how well each of our selected browsers compare when it comes to showing various web elements. In particular we'll be benchmarking the following features

• JavaScript
• Flash
• Java Applets
• CSS
• Standards compliant web pages

Memory footprint(usage) on Windows Vista -

What I did over here is found sites with relevant web elements & ran them one at a time in each browser. The idea being that if I run only one browser at a time I should get comparable results. Also I made sure that I restarted the relevant machines to make sure that each browser did not have less memory to work with due to some other browsers orphaned process.

Below are the results for each of the browsers on Windows Vista.

Web Element	Google Chrome*	Mozilla Firefox	Internet Explorer(IE, Microsoft)+	Opera
Idle - No elements loaded	13,044 K	13,644 K	8,612 K	18,952 K
Standard complaints web page	13,248 K	13,396 K	18,820 K	18,952 K
JavaScript	30,940 K	32,352 K	41,612 K	38032 K
Applets	No plugin available - Huh!	35,044 K	48,044 K	43,348 K
CSS	15,432 K	14,964 K	19,868 K	21,612 K
Flash	16,100 K	25,044 K	31,580 K	30,932 K

* I added memory usage for all chrome.exe processes. There were 2 when I had just one tab open.
+ I included ieuser.exe process along with the iexplore.exe process.

Memory footprint(usage) on Windows XP -

Here are the results for each of the browsers on Windows XP- Currently running tests on Windows XP

Web Element	Google Chrome*	Mozilla Firefox	Internet Explorer(IE, Microsoft)+	Opera
Idle - No elements loaded	34,329 K	37,700 K	8,612 K	28712 K
Standard complaints web page	35,584 K	40,444 K	35,448 K	17,860 K
JavaScript	59,736 K	57,596 K	53,400 K	35,724 K
Applets	No plugin available - Huh!	63,664 K	68,108 K	55,108 K
CSS	37,252 K	40,396 K	41,520 K	17,920 K
Flash	36,864 K	50,640 K	41,824 K	30,248 K

* I added memory usage for all chrome.exe processes. There were 2 when I had just one tab open.
+ I included ieuser.exe process along with the iexplore.exe process.

Conclusion -

So what do all the numbers above mean. Well for starters it seems that Google has done a good job in keeping the memory usages of Google Chrome atleast at or below par from that of Mozilla Firefox. This means that Google Chrome can not only match up to it's competition but can also deliver what most browsers can with atleast similar memory usages(memory footprint). This is a good thing given that Google Chrome is still a beta & barely a couple of hours old on the internet.

I do hate the fact that Java Applets are not yet supported. Well, off to my research on that now. Do check in often, I'll be giving my opinions on how good or bad Google Chrome is.

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Happy surfing fellas!

Jump To >> Google Chrome Browser - Review

Be advised folks, this article is my own work & I'm in no way related to any of the browsers companies mentioned in this article. I'm simply putting forth my views & the results of my own experimentation for y'all to see. This is not a true benchmark, nor does it follow any accepted guidelines for such benchmarking. This article should not be relied on for any accuracy.