Sep 26, 2012

I’ve been a loyal Mozilla Firefox user for the past 6 years; however, early last year, I made the switch to Google Chrome completely. The main reason for switching was Chrome’s initial load time, fast rendering, auto-implemented development tools and the simple yet powerful user experience it offered. Well, apparently I wasn’t the only one who made the switch. If you look at major websites’ visitors’ browser usage statistics (here), you can see that Chrome is killing it. What Firefox has done to Internet Explorer, Chrome is doing it to both now. Nowadays, approximately 30% to 43% of the users on the web use Google Chrome. And there is a reason for it.

1. Simple yet powerful user experience: Before Chrome, other browsers made us believe that having bunch of toolbars and tons of other stuff below and above the address bar looked cool. What Chrome did was taking only the useful and leaving everything else to apps. Tabs, address bar and bookmarks, that is it. This is the default look. No file menus, etc.

2. Super fast start up: Google Chrome loads the fastest. No need to discuss about that because it is already proven by tests.

3. Adapting to new technologies: While Internet Explorer is trying to make our grandpas happy, Chrome is the one that takes the challenge and moves the industry forward. It now bears the flag of innovation in browsers and has taken it from Firefox few years ago. Proof? One example is HTML5 adaptation. Chrome is the best browser for HTML5, it’s HTML5 support and performance is way above that of any browser on the market. I also have to give credit to its powerful v8 Javascript Engine as most of the dynamic web is powered by Javascript these days.

4. Gaming and extra graphics: If you don’t know what Chrome Web Labs has been doing, I suggest you check out the experiments here. You can play an instrument collaboratively in London’s Science Museum, straight from your browser. Also, I have seen cool infographics utilizing Chrome’s extensive WebGL and hardware-accelerated 3D graphics support. Recently, Chrome announced that it will come with improved its graphics with the inclusion of Pointer Lock JavaScript API, which can help sites like Binguez to create interactive 3D games.

5. Customizability: Until a certain point, I would say that nobody could beat Firefox in customizability. However, Google’s open development ecosystem benefited every software that it introduced and Chrome is no different. Any plugin that you want to have and is existent Firefox Addons website exists in Chrome Web Store.

6. Developer-friendly: This might be irrelevant for an average web user but is a bonus for developers like myself, because I have used all the developer tools that browser’s offer: Firefox’s Firebug, Internet Explorer’s default developer tools, etc. But hands down, Google Chrome’s native developer tools beats all of them especially when it comes to features and debugging.

I’m not a fan boy of any company in tech but I think innovation should be rewarded more than marketed monopoly. And Chrome shows us the way that the web should be. If you still haven’t made the switch, now you know the reason why you should act now!