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Browser of the Week: Chrome Conclusions

I cannot tell a lie. I hardly used Chrome this week. The problem, as I mentioned when I kicked off this Browser of the Week installment, is that my primary work computer is my Mac Book Air (from which I access my Mac Pro remotely to do development). I don’t even have Parallels on my Air, so I’ve been running Chrome in Parallels on the Mac Pro and accessing it via Remote Desktop Connection. If you ever want to make your product really sluggish and unpleasant to use, this would be a great way to accomplish that. Despite the best of intentions, I quickly became impatient and went back to using my local Firefox.

What little usage I did get out of Chrome impressed me. Considering that this is the first rev of a very complex software beast, I had surprisingly few issues. Everything seemed very simple, streamlined and straightforward. While I’m skeptical of the various kooky conspiracy theories about why Google made Chrome, it may turn out to have more strategic value that a lot of their zillions of products. The web app desktop shortcut creation is particularly intriguing. They’ve got a lot of work to do to catch up with Prism, but I’m officially worried.

I’ll revisit once they release a Mac version.