Google Chrome review in one sort-of word: Meh

It's not like I need another browser. Before installing Chrome, my sweet Fedora 11 rig was equipped with (in order of favorite to least favorite) Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, Safari, and the ultra-crappy Internet Explorer (under Wine -- why does anyone use this piece of junk? Oh, right, because they're under some kind of spell that makes them blind to the vast world beyond Microsoftie stuff... anyway...). I also keep Lynx around for fun. To me the true test of good web design is this: It's worth browsing the site in Lynx; the site works.

So anyway, I don't need another browser.

I decided to give Google Chrome a try just so I could make sure all my sites render properly in that browser since it's showing up in the logs. I was also excited to give Chrome's developer tools a try since Google's developer tools and APIs tend toward the amazing. These high expectations explain in part why Chrome disappointed me.

The interface is excellent, I must say, what you expect from Google: simple, elegant, intuitive. A few simple icon buttons at the top of the browser give you everything you need: bookmark in one click, control page settings under one button (zoom, finding stuff in the page, saving the page, encoding, etc.) browser settings (the skins are awesome, and some of the extensions look pretty cool too) under another button. Very slick. You have to love Google -- why hasn't anyone else set up a browser like this before? It's so totally logical.

Everything is easy, but functionality is limited, at least compared to Firefox. It's kind of like Google Docs that way -- they work, but you're not exactly going to use them for heavy lifting. The developer tools left a lot to be desired, and I backed out of the SEO extension when, before installing itself, it politely informed me that the extension would have access to everything I do on every website I visit. That spooked me. Like everyone else these days, I perform many website and server admin tasks through my browser, and I just don't like having those passwords and databases exposed like that. Google knows enough about me already. It doesn't look like the extension does all that much anyway. Oddly, it doesn't even integrate with current Google results the way Firefox's SEO Book extension does.

Some of the extensions do look totally cool, though, like the one that finds the lowest price on anything. I need to keep my wife away from that one. I'm sure the translation features are pretty sweet as well.

No way am I switching to Chrome as my primary workhorse, though. It is no faster than Firefox and seems slower than Opera.

Some big bugs reared their heads as well. One that surprised me was that Chrome burped on opening the code editor in my CPanel. CPanel is so widely used that you would think somebody on the Chrome team would have discovered that particular deal-breaking bug. I mean, I'm not going to start FTPing back and forth again. Not that I don't like to party like it's 1999, but come on! Chrome also rendered some pages (not my own) strangely -- missing graphics and things like that -- which was surprising.

It's nice, but not nice enough to supplant Firefox or even Opera. It might be slightly better than Konqueror -- I don't really know. It's on a par with Safari, I suppose. The only major browser to which Chrome is clearly superior is IE, but it would be hard to do much worse than that slow, clunky, insecure piece of crap.

Even if Chrome were the hands-down winner in every department -- which it is not -- I still wouldn't make it my primary browser. Google knows more than enough about me already. They don't need access to my entire browsing profile.