Google’s Chrome Browser For Mac: Good, Bad, Ugly

Web browser users have it good early in the 21st century. There are a dozen excellent browser choices for both Mac and Windows PC users.

The latest browser to catch on with a small minority is Google’s Chrome, not yet out of beta for Mac users, somehow already at version 4.x. Is the latest version of Chrome ready for prime time? It’s the best ever, but Google’s tradition of Beta Forever™ means this Chrome is good, if not quite ready for prime time. Why add another browser to your Mac?

Why A Google Browser?

This is a good question. It’s not as if the browser market, Mac or Windows, is lacking fast, high quality browsers.

Safari is quick, elegant, renders pages and Javascript blazingly fast. Mozilla’s Firefox is quick, loaded with features and add-ons, renders pages well, and Javascript blazingly fast.

What does Google want to do with Chrome, a browser based on Firefox and Safari? It’s a long story, but suffice it to say it’s all about control. Google sells ads.

What better way to sell more advertisements than creating a controlled community for cloud applications than within a browser window? Think of the advantages.

Google applications and documents can be customized to perform better within Chrome than other browsers. Chrome arguably is more secure than Firefox or Safari, certainly more than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

What Does Chrome Do For Mac Users?

For now, the answer is, not much. It’s a spartan, inelegant browser based on Google’s own V8 Javascript rendering engine and Safari’s WebKit web page rendering engine. It’s a very bare bones browser. Don’t expect much more.

In fact, Chrome on the Mac, while fast, is anything but attractive. Web pages will render about the same as in Safari (and Firefox). Tabs are decidedly Windowesque. Folder icons for bookmarks appear stolen from Windows Explorer.

Features? Not much. There’s no bookmark manager. The application mode and task manager are absent. Gears is not supported. User interface glitches abound.

While the Windows version of Chrome has garnered nearly 3-percent of web users, surpassing Safari for Windows, the Mac version has lagged behind in features, and has even less polish. If you can call anything about Chrome as polished.

Are you asking yourself the question, “Why?” I feel your pain. Chrome is a work in progress (isn’t everything at Google that way?) that holds far more promise for a superior browsing experience than what it delivers today.

So, what exactly is that famed Google Chrome browsing experience for Mac users? Click Here for Page 2 and all the goodies.