Back to the future: two years of Google Chrome | Hacker News Reader

Back to the future: two years of Google Chrome

googleblog.blogspot.com

15 pointsjeff187 comments

As an early adopter of firefox, I need to say that the first time I tried Chrome, I felt the need to immediately make the switch. Main benefit : speed. I assume that many people are doing the same, and for the same reasons.

We all know that firefox has some problems regarding memory leaks, and memory usage when activating a bunch of addons. This is not the case with chrome (at least for me).

That's the thing that impresses me most with Chrome. They are innovating the browser in a variety of ways while keeping it slim and very, very fast. Like most, I was a Firefox user as well and even though Firefox 4 is pretty sharp and quick, there's no reason for me to go back to it now.

Chromium is slim? Compared to what exactly? The only browser I've ever used with similar memory usage to Chromium would have to be Opera. Even on a relatively optimized build of Chromium 7.0.510.0, it's pretty typical for me to see memory usage of ~300MB with only three tabs open. I shudder to think how much memory Chromium eats when used by tab junkies who have 20+ pages open at a time.

I can see how Chromium gives users the illusion that it's slim, but I don't think it's accurate to call it that. I would reserve the word slim for browsers like uzbl and Midori.

Slim in terms of features. Programs that use more memory to be fast don't bother me - that's what the memory is for.

I have to agree about Chromium, but Opera has one of the smallest memory footprints of all the browsers I have. I don't use it much because of the UI, but it sure as hell doesn't take up as much memory as Chromium.

Same here, and while Firefox is somewhat faster now it's still much slower to start up, and for me occasionally the whole process will freeze due to activity in a single tab.

I don't have to deal with any of that with Chrome.

On Ubuntu, the new version of Chrome mentioned in the article moves the close/minimize buttons to the left side if you have it configured that way in metacity.

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