I’ve been using the Google Chrome web browser as my primary browser at home since shortly after it was released. I had previously been using Firefox as my primary browser but I wanted to see what the new browser from Google had to offer.

Having given it a bit of time I wanted to list some pros and cons for the benefit of others who may have considered making the switch.

Pros

• Quick performance with a very clean interface
• Nice thumbnail view of frequently visited sites when opening a tab
• Intelligent address bar that can find parts of a web address just by typing in a word
• Fast Google search within address bar
• A crash within a tab doesn’t crash the browser

Cons

• No RSS autodiscovery
• No add-ons to extend functionality
• Display of some website elements not consistent with what I’ve seen in Firefox
• Doesn’t integrate with Google Bookmarks 

Chrome vs. Firefox

Firefox is still the much better browser. The rich suite of Firefox add-ons is what makes the difference.I’ve become so accustomed to the add-ons in Firefox that I feel web disabled when working in a browser that doesn’t have similar functionality. It’s also very surprising that Chrome does not allow you to utilize Google Bookmarks as the bookmarking manager out of the box. Firefox does allow this via the GMarks add-on.

I like the address bar in Google Chrome but there’s also very similar functionality in Firefox via the Smart Location (or “Awesome”) bar. After making the comparison I think that the Chrome’s biggest advantage lies in the fact that each tab is isolated from the entire application which means that the crash of a single tab doesn’t crash all of the tabs.

Making Chrome Better

I don’t know if Google is going to try and open up the development of Chrome to allow developer add-ons ala Firefox. I think that would help to improve the overall utility of the browser. Would developers show up? One thing that Google can do is to improve integration with Google products like Gmail, Bookmarks, Reader and Talk. These products have an ever expanding user base and many people would likely be pleased with a browser that offers a “one stop shop” for using the most popular Google services.