After the first day of Google Chrome there is still a lot of noise on the Internet with various reports about how it performs, it's adherence to standards, security concerns, it's fore-casted market share and any issues people have found so far.
There's been various reports on the performance of Chrome when it comes to using JavaScript as it's big claim was that it is faster than other browsers currently available with it's V8 engine. Cnet offers a report based on a series of scores that are determined by a series of tests:
- Richards: OS kernel simulation benchmark, originally written in BCPL by Martin Richards (539 lines),
- DeltaBlue: One-way constraint solver, originally written in Smalltalk by John Maloney and Mario Wolczko (880 lines),
- Crypto: Encryption and decryption benchmark based on code by Tom Wu (1,689 lines),
- RayTrace: Ray tracer benchmark based on code by Adam Burmister (3,418 lines),
- EarleyBoyer: Classic Scheme benchmarks, translated to JavaScript by Florian Loitsch's Scheme2Js compiler (4,682 lines).
The results of their tests puts Google Chrome at a score of almost 2,000 whereas IE7, IE8 beta 2, Firefox 3.0.1 and Safari 3.1.2 score significantly lower with the best of them scoring around 200. Now if we look at the results on another site, Lifehacker, they provide a more intelligible set of results scored in seconds. In these results you should note that a smaller value is a higher score.
JavaScript
- Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 - 600 ms
- Firefox 3.1 Beta - 300 ms
- Chrome Beta 0.2 - 350 ms
Okay so not quite as Google claim... according to Lifehacker's tests we can see Firefox is faster than Chrome when running their JavaScript tests though the Firefox and Chrome are close enough for Lifehacker to call it a tie (statistical analysis should have some margin of error to allow for inconsistent results so they're right in doing so). They also report Firefox 3 winning when it comes to memory usage from startup and with 8 open tabs too.
Another site, Simple Thoughts, have voiced similar concerns with memory usage. During their tests they opened a 16.5Mb PHP manual page over their local network and found it took 2 minutes to load in Firefox (they didn't say which version) and was still loading after 20 minutes in Chrome. Also, they found that Chrome having just that tab open with the 16.5Mb PHP manual page loaded caused 576Mb RAM to be used. That's pretty ridiculous really, I don't think Firefox at it's worst would manage that. The memory usage was also increasing for them everytime they refreshed the page meaning that there is a serious memory leak. So they've turned the tap off for any JavaScript memory leaks, but seem to have sprung a leak elsewhere. There's also the fact that their Garbage collector for JavaScript is intensive enough to cause unresponsive script problems in some cases due to the way they've implemented it.
Another important issue with the browser I've read about on Neowin. The first of the points they raise is that the "carpet bomb" vulnerability still exists in Chrome. Apparently this issue exists in Chrome as they're using a release of WebKit that was released prior to them fixing it for Safari 3.1.2 and so wasn't updated before being released to the public. They've also quoted an issue with the EULA.
By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.
Hmm, I think not. I won't be using Google Chrome again until they revise their EULA. I didn't realise anyone actually read software EULA's but in this case it's a good job someone did!
So overall it's looking like a pretty bad start for Chrome.
