I'm writing this post using Google Chrome -- Google's new web browser that was just released today. After a little goofing around with it, here are my initial impressions.

1) It's fast -- running some JavaScripts side by side with Firefox, Chrome is noticeably faster.

2) Everything works as expected -- no weirdness or non-functional websites yet.

3) It uses about 40% less RAM than Firefox (I imagine this varies based on what you're doing with it, but that's what I've seen so far).

4) It gives you a little more screen space by shrinking its title bar and hiding the status area except when you're mousing over a link.

But it's not all sunshine and flowers.

5) I really don't like having the bookmarks menu over on the right side of the browser -- I tend to have my mouse pointer on the left side of the window, and it's kind of a pain (using my laptop's trackpad) to hop over to the right side to access bookmarks, especially since folders in the bookmarks menu cascade to the left because of the menu coming down near the right edge of the screen.

6) I can't find a way to manage bookmarks (yes, I know that I can edit one folder or bookmark at a time by right clicking on it, but what I want is to drag things around and drop them in new places).

7) I can't imagine this will be an issue for long, but there's no way a way to view PageRank info for the pages I'm browsing. I don't look at this often, but once in a while.

8) I want to be able to type a domain name without the "www" or ".com" like I can with Firefox. That sometimes works, but you have to be careful, because you never know whether Chrome is going to load a webpage or search Google. I liked the way Mozilla used to handle that -- search always came up as the last item in the drop down list of options, so one touch of the "up" arrow would give me a search. Typing the domain name and hitting "enter" would load the webpage.

9) There's no Mac version yet.

Reader Comment:
sameer said:
I m waiting for the alpha version (with a lot of improvement).
(join the conversation below)

Overall, assuming everything I've just typed isn't about to disappear when I try to publish, I'm very impressed.