Why you shouldn’t bother with Chrome

Google Chrome

In our last two posts we talked about Google Chrome. We looked most recently at why you should use Chrome. But to be fair, it isn’t the only browser out there, and some say it needs more polish to be a serious browser.

Here are some reasons to look at not using Chrome.

• (Currently) no extensions for Chrome. This will affect power users more than any one else, especially Firefox users. The power of extensions is immeasurable as it allows you to improve your experience on the web. Extensions are what makes Firefox the browser of choice for many users, and they will not likely willingly give up their favorite addons.
• I see ads. Chief among these extensions are the various Ad Blockers. It is in Google’s self interest to allow ads, as this is how they make their money. However displaying all these ads makes pages take longer to load and display. It also effects your bandwidth if you surf in a limited bandwidth environment.
• Some Internet Explorer 6 sites will not work. Some sites are designed strictly for IE6. This means that only IE will work, and in some cases not even newer versions of IE. I have to use a couple of these sites for work, so I still use Internet Explorer for them.
• No improvement in Flash Sites/Components. Google improved the JavaScript performance, because they do a lot with JavaScript. However, Flash is being used on many other sites to display graphs, charts, and add interactivity. I would say that Flash is used more often than JavaScript, and Flash is not addressed by Chrome.
• Lack of support for Linux and Macintosh computers. They are supposed to be coming however, but they are not here yet.
• Chrome is a stripped down browser in many ways. While this makes it easy to use, users may be confused by the lack of standard buttons, like there is no home button, or print button.
• Of course there are many rumors and fears about it being run by Google: (so far these are only fears, but who knows what future versions will hold)
  • Google can track my Internet use more
  • Google will prevent me from going to competing sites/search engines
  • Google will replace others ads with their own
  • Google will additional ads

Memory usage of Chrome Browser

Also interesting to note is that Chrome, while it is supposed to use a smaller memory foot print, might actually use more in the short term. This is because it uses multiple processes, each with their own memory usage, instead of one large chunk of memory. I’m currently running Chrome as my (almost) exclusive browser this week to see how it handles itself over time.

I also expect that when Chrome starts to allow extensions, it will slow a it down a bit.

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