Ok, so now that i've had a chance to play with "chrome" (currently, you can too if you like), here's a few impressions:
- i really don't like the boiler plate terms of use they stapled on. It's got the usual CYA kind of stuff in it but parts don't quite make sense for a browser (e.g. "We can terminate your account and you lose your stuff. Tough." parts as well as "We reserve the right to filter stuff and not show them to you." Does that mean that if my google account gets dropped that i can no longer open a browser window to figure out how to fix it? Does that mean that Google will block Yahoo! News because they're feeling snippy that day? Did i just say "Yeah, sure, go right ahead."?) In any case, i can see i'm not going to be using this as my main browser.
- It feels zippy on my Dual Core P5 laptop, but then, so does Firefox when you turn off all the extensions.
- Speaking of which, it's incredibly minimal. Something between a real browser and Prism. There's a combo search/url bar, plus back, forward, refresh, command and "options" (where options are also insanely limited.) "about:config" returns nothing, there's no viewable code anywhere (it's all DLLs), and the "javascript debugger" doesn't seem like it's really that well flushed out. (at least, i can't imagine actually using it to debug code ala firebug).
- The astute will note "no home button". Guess you restart for that.
- They also fore-go using standard chrome elements for their own. Big no-no that. Yes, the minimize, maximize and close buttons are roughly in the same spot, but the icon is missing, the title is a right justified "Google" instead of the current page and you'd better like rounded robin's egg blue for windows.
- Oddly, most of the Mozilla keystrokes are there (^T for new tab, ^N for new window, zoom is ^+ and ^-). Likewise, you click on a star to quickly bookmark the current page. Guess they didn't mind those.
All-in-all, i'm not really impressed. i can't quickly extend or really customize it much. It feels more like riding one of those kiddie car rides where things are on a rail to prevent you from going off track or doing something fun. In it's current flavor, it seems like a step backwards rather than forwards.
(oh, and folks getting excited by resizable text areas need to note that it's a pretty simple Javascript hack to do that.)
The home button is an option found in 'options' took me a while to figure that out.
My major gripe was it didn't ask what drive I wanted to install it on, and C: is the default. Also another gripe (and yes I know it's beta) no install is the same. The first pc I installed it on allowed me to click 'customize' when it was about to import bookmarks, but only gave me the option to import from FF. The second pc I installed it on didn't give me the option to customize and automatically imported from IE and no option in 'options' for me to import from FF rendering the stupid thing useless since I didn't have any bookmarks in IE as I never use it.
Not sure what caused that, one pc has FF3 the other doesn't perhaps, or maybe it has something to do with Win updates, one is fully updated the other I only pulled out of the closet this morning.
And what the hell is this?
Whatever I type in the search box whether I submit it or not is logged by google? ppft?
And seriously, you have GOT to give me a bigger form to type into - I don't like having to scroll to see my typos and spelling errors.
For the home page you can also hit "alt+home"
Save This Page

Brilliant strategy for Google.
Home pages are so last century and most people use Yahoo! as their start page. Open a new tab, and goog will populate thumbs of the most visited pages. Very zippy. Their js engine seems very much improved in terms of performance.