At 3 PM today, Google released their brand new internet browser, aptly titled “Chrome”. (Chrome is a term that describes a viewing window of an interactive application). Based off of WebKit, a 100% standards compliant browser open source application framework which also serves as the basis for Safari and Google Android. Since its based off of WebKit, most developers, well, competent developers, don’t have to worry about their sites breaking in this new browser. With WebKit as its base, it guarantees a near 100% compliant site, if you did it correctly.

I myself was a skeptic and thought oh boy, another browser. It’s difficult enough with 4 browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera) to maintain a level of consistency and future proofing of your markup and javascript to not only work now, but work a year or two from that point. I was relieved when I found out Chrome is founded on WebKit and not some proprietary engine like Internet Explorer is, which would be quite silly.

I tried to benchmark the loading speed of the browser, and well, I couldn’t. This little baby is faster than Opera on a good day, and at worst, Firefox on a bad day (its a good thing). I made sure to clear out all history, cache, and cookies then tried again. Still lightening fast. I tried everything I could think of that would slow me down some from Digg to Scriptaculous to Design Melt Down to Ebay and CNN. Nothing. The sites loaded up before I could blink or release the Enter key. Even some javascript heavy sites didn’t bog down this browser at all. Major points in my book.

So, while I had trepidation last night about the arrival of yet another browser, Google really has a homerun product here. With a stripped down browser like this, organized fairly well, it should do great on the market and generate a lot of buzz. Chrome will be replacing Firefox for me at home, and if it continues at this pace, I’ll use it as my main at the office as well. Somewhere, Steve Ballmer is exploding in anger.

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