technology

I have been using Google Chrome (open source web browser developed by Google) for the last few hours, and my initial overall impressions are very positive.

It does not appear to be significantly faster than Firefox 3 or Safari, but that is acceptable for the first iteration of a Beta product.

I appreciate enormously the streamlined look without menus, with just three icons, very limited options and the tabs at the very top. It looks like they took a page from Apple's book of interaction design, and it feels very much like a Google product.

And I absolutely adore the Omnibox, the all-in-one address bar and search bar, in particular its Tab-to-Search feature: just type amazon (or youtube, or any other website name that offers a search functionality) into the address bar, then 'tab', then keywords and you are searching within the site, with auto-suggestions popping up underneath your search as results come up.

If you want to read a full review, which very interestingly compares Chrome to Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 (in which, surprisingly, IE does not come out badly at all), try First Test of Google’s New Browser.

And if you are one of the many people who are worried about Google collecting more and more data about your life, I recommend Preventing paranoia: when does Google Chrome talk to Google.com?

Other useful links:

• download Google Chrome;
• read about Google Chrome on Wikipedia;
• read the Google Chrome comic book.