The Playground

Today Google released its first Web browser, called Chrome. An online comic book published on Monday gives a run-down on why Google thought users were ready for a new browser.

Features

The address serves all your browsing needs: web search, web history, address bar and gives suggestions as you type.

Every time you open a new tab, you'll see thumbnails of your most visited sites, most used search engines, and recently bookmarked pages and closed tabs.

Drag tabs out of the browser to create new windows, gather multiple tabs into one window or arrange your tabs how you want.

Every tab you're using is run independently in the browser, so if one app crashes it won't take anything else down.

Incognito mode for private browsing.

Google Chrome warns you if you're about to visit a suspected phishing, malware or otherwise unsafe website.

Just click the star icon at the left edge of the address bar and you've bookmarked the page.

Import settings from your existing Web browser: bookmarks, passwords and browsing history are all brought over.

Hover over a link and information appears in the status bar. It only appears when needed.

And best of all, it's fast.

Drawbacks

If you're a Firefox user like myself you have an arsenal of add-ons that you've come to rely on, and already I'm missing a couple of these. Since Chrome was only released today, there's none available yet.

The browser history is not as extensive as other browsers so bookmarks will bloat.

Conclusion

I'm sure there'll be other disappointments but so far I'm impressed. I like the clean, uncluttered look, the fast page loads and the new tab feature. Blog posts about Chrome are popping up all over the Web since this is a Beta release, we can only expect more improvements to follow.