Thumbs-down for Google Chrome

Published 9/3/08

Filed under: Technology

So I got Google Chrome, the new browser that’s all over the tech news. It’s fine. It’s OK. But it’s no Firefox.

Under the hood I have no doubt it’s terrific. It’s certainly fast, and I like some aspects of the new design — tabs on the top, notably.

But it’s lacking in so many ways compared to Firefox that I don’t plan to use is as my “daily driver.” Firefox is better.

Here’s why.

Most importantly, with Chrome I lose all my Firefox extensions, from Twitterbar (for easy Twitter posts) to BugMeNot (for easy logins) to ColorZilla (for identifying colors on a page) to DOM Inspector for examining a page’s structure.

There’s no Scrapbook for saving chunks of Web pages. No Forecastbar for showing me the weather. And there’s very limited control over cookies the way you have with the wonderful CookieCuller extension.

I can’t sync my bookmarks from one browser to another. With Firefox I use Foxmarks, and my bookmarks on my home computer are the same as those on my work machine. (And with Portable Firefox on my thumb drive, those bookmarks travel with me to any computer.) If I want that with Chrome, I have to navigate to a Web site like del.icio.us instead of having it update automatically.

The toolbar is set in stone; you can’t customize it as you can in Firefox. That was one of my complaints about Internet Explorer 7.

Then there are little things.

Unlike Firefox, Chrome doesn’t remember the last download location; it always defaults to whatever is set in the user preferences. With Firefox, if I download an image and save it to, say, c:\images, the next time I go to download one it will start me in that folder (until I close the browser). When I’m working on a project that uses lots of pics I download, I put them all in one project folder. With Chrome, I have to navigate to that folder over and over. Annoying.

Chrome, as I said, is a fine browser. It may well be faster than Firefox. But it was clearly designed with only basic end-users in mind, whereas Firefox works for both those folks and people like me who have come to rely on the terrific extra functions available with all those extensions.

The Fray

7 responses (add yours)

Trae says:

I have to whole heartily agree. Chrome is nice and looks great (I don’t have the toolbar problem that you have) but I want my extensions. I want my evernote incorporation, I to can’t live without Foxmarks and Adblock plus. The rest I could live without, but why would I if I can have them. Even though Chrome was very fast, I’m not so dissatisfied with Firefox’s speed to sacrifice the rest.

September 3rd, 2008 at 9:52 AM

Steve says:

I’m not sure it’s fair to criticize Google’s browser for not having already developed Firefox’s 3rd-party plugins, which have been developed over the last several years.

… unless it has no ability to add plugins? Is that the case? As a web designer, the thought of a new, popular browser is terrifying.

September 3rd, 2008 at 8:18 PM

Andrew says:

You have a point, but I still think it’s fair. It’s not a matter of one being objectively better than the other — it’s about which program is best suited to my browsing, and that’s Firefox.

I’m not commenting on what it might become, just what it is now. And now it’s not as good as Firefox.

And some of my criticism is about the program itself — the lack of customization potential. When you look at Firefox’s options, there’s a lot to work with. Chrome has hardly anything.

September 3rd, 2008 at 10:47 PM

tommy says:

b e t a

first beta release, in fact.

am I off the mark?

I tried it, I uninstalled it, I’m waiting, but not judging yet.

September 4th, 2008 at 11:44 AM

Andrew says:

Gmail is “beta,” too — as are many of Google’s products. I don’t believe in giving them a free pass just ’cause they slap the word “Beta” on a product!

September 5th, 2008 at 11:04 AM

David Bradley says:

I would’ve flagged your post on Sciencetext if I’d seen it at the time of writing, so thanks for commenting and leaving the link ;-)

September 5th, 2008 at 11:14 AM

ant1pathy says:

I’ve downloaded it, tried it, and won’t use it yet. It’s not finished, but I feel that it has a TON of potential. It’s missing all of my Firefox plugins, but it IS a beta release and doesn’t have the community development that Firefox (and Mozilla before it) has enjoyed over the course of several years. If it pans out, Chrome WILL be my browser of choice if I can recreated most, if not all, of my Firefox browsing (plugins specifically) into it. To make specific criticisms about how it doesn’t do everything a fully developed, multi-generation product with a horde of private developers writing addons and extensions for as a beta release is a little… disingenuous.

September 7th, 2008 at 7:40 AM