The Channel Wire

May 22, 2009

Google said on Thursday that its Chrome Web browser is now a whole lot faster -- that is, loading JavaScript Web pages through its V8 JavaScript engine happens 30 percent faster than before. Google confirmed as much in posts to the Official Google Blog and the Google Chrome Blog.

"It's been about eight months since we launched Google Chrome," wrote Darin Fisher from the Google Chrome Team. "Aside from exclaiming how fast it is, users have been sending us lots of feedback and and feature requests. We've increased our focus on speed and also added some of the most-requested features."

According to Fisher's post, the updates will be automatically downloaded to Chrome. He also mentioned a number of other changes to Chrome, including what according to Google is the most requested new feature: the ability to remove thumbnail from Chrome's New Tab page. Before, the images would display a user's most visited Web sites.

Google Chrome also now has a full-screen mode for watching presentations and videos, and includes a form autofill function common to most browsers. Fisher also touted increased stability -- including a fix for more than 300 bugs in Chrome -- and increased speed as areas Google Chrome developers would continue to focus on.

Google has had a hard time gaining traction for its Chrome browser and has taken to unusual advertising means, including the airing of a TV ad earlier this month depicting building blocks coming together to form a browser window.

It's too early to tell how effective the TV ads were, but we're guessing better speeds and sleeker performance are going to be what endears Google Chrome to browsers, not its TV presence. It's also going to need the best features if it's going to be a viable competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox. If autofill's all you've got, Google, you're still back of the line.