Google Chrome: One Week Later

So it's been one week since our review of Google Chrome, and we wanted to provide an update to how it's working beyond our initial use.

Pros:

• Simplistic design is very easy to use
• Omnibox is convenient and reduces screen clutter
• It's open source and already has a thriving developer community
• expect a lot of add-ons and variations to emerge soon (similar to firefox extensions)
• It's Google so it has great potential to incorporate many of the other service from Google (i.e. Gmail, Docs, Google Talk, iGoogle, and many other services)

Cons:

• The Custom Panel Start Page wasn't very useful
• If I'm going to one of my most visited websites, I know the URL and it's just as easy to type it than click on it
• If you use CCleaner to remove your history regularly, the start page doesn't show much except websites you just visited.
• Truly a beta program
• the program crashed and froze numerous times
• had problems running certain websites, including Google's own blogging website, Blogger (crashed while writing this post)
• Google had a bit of trouble with their End User License Agreement 
• Google makes it's money off advertising and collecting user data (what should make Chrome any different)
• once Google has you using their browser there's no telling when they will incorporate ads in.
• Google collects data on your browsing, "Privacy advocates are already warning users that the id can be used to create exact user profiles of a user’s actions while using Google Chrome." via ghacks

Overall, Google Chrome has huge potential and it'll be interesting to see where it goes.  Google can go in many different directions and make this browser a force to be reckoned with in the already competitive market of internet browsers.  The only downside could be that this may actually help Microsoft more than hurt it, which was Google's aim.  For the longest time, if you didn't use Internet Explorer, you used Firefox.  And to use Firefox you had to make a conscious decision to not use Internet Explorer, which is the default on Windows Computers.  Now people looking for an alternative have Chrome as well as Firefox.  Chrome has potential to make the browser market harder for the underdog rather than Microsoft's Internet Explorer.  It'll be interesting to see how this ends up and it's definitely something to keep an eye on.