Few days ago I read a news in TomsHardware saying that most google chrome users are back to IE or Firefox. The article states that upon launching chrome, it scooped up a whooping 1.4% share market stealing users from IE and Firefox. It has been few weeks after the launch, and the new stats shows that chrome keeps on losing its user base back to IE and Firefox.

I had not had the time to try chrome. I had been wanting to try it, ever since I read that famous Chrome comic, but I had been so hooked up with the new IE that I completely forgot about it. After I read that news it made me wander, what made chrome to lose its user base? So I decided to close my IE, and install Chrome.

My first impression to chrome that its very simplistic and has somewhat outdated feeling to the design. With the first look, I had the feeling that there won't be much that chrome offers to its users. So I begin in checking what settings that it's got for me, and wow im completely shocked!! There're not much settings to tweak from the web browser. What shocked me even more, there are not much options shown in the security settings. It makes me doubt if this browser is really as safe as its advertised.

Performance wise, I must say it lives up to its expectations. It loads web pages preety darn fast. Tab performance was good as well. Didn't see any lag that IE has when opening a new tab. Having said that, it still has some problems with realibility. It crashed a couple of times for me, especially when I had many tabs opened. Moreover, as im writting this, it doesn't seem to support silverlight very well. Most silverlight websites that I've tried, It's either loads up very slow or it crashed on me.

In conclusion, I have to agree that the chrome performs preety well in most websites, despite its problem with silverlight websites. On average its more or less the same performance as Firefox, and a little bit faster than IE. But all that performance is probably because chrome is a very lightweight web-browser. It doesn't offer many features, and I'd say that the security of the web browser is questionable. In my opinion, it doesn't have the wow factor in it to make its users wants to stay. I can see now why it has lost its user base, there's just no good reason to stay. People go back to IE and Firefox because you get about the same performance, and getting all the other goody features that they offer.

RWendi