I’ve been pretty excited about the entry of the Chrome browser into the browser wars. For starters it has the full force of Google behind it. Secondly, since they essentially launched the AJAX revolution with GMail Google is keenly aware of JavaScript performance. Let’s put it this way… very fast JavaScript only makes sites which make heavy use of JavaScript more useable. Read that as “Google wants to web-enable everything”. Back in March of this year Google released a faster beta version of Chrome that boasted some performance enhancements. However, since Chrome is not your typical stay-in-beta-forever Google product (I’m looking at you GMail!!!!) it wasn’t something most users downloaded. Well, with their 2.x release you now get their 25-35% speed increase in benchmarking tests, along with a few other pluses (most of which other browsers have had for some time now). Seriously though, the real story here is the V8 JavaScript engine and it’s performance… which in a word is… SICK!

Ok so let’s look at what else you get first:

• Improved New Tab Page: The most requested feature from users was the ability to remove thumbnails from the New Tab page. Now you can finally hide that embarrassing gossip blog from the Most Visited section.
• Full Screen Mode: If you’ve ever given a presentation or watched a large video using Google Chrome, you might have wished you could use every last pixel on your screen for the content. Now you can hide the title bar and the rest of the browser window by hitting F11 or selecting the option in the Tools menu.
• Form Autofill: Filling out your information in forms over and over again can be tedious. Form autofill helps by showing information you’ve previously entered into the same form fields automatically. If at any point you want to clear out your information, that’s easy to do from the Tools menu.

Cool… most of that other modern browsers already have. But how much faster is it? Well, hit up the V8 Benchmark Suite – version 4 in your favorite browsers and see. You can get the full scoop on what each of the tests mean by visiting the site, but here’s the results on my system:

Chrome 2.0.172.28:
Score: 3759
Richards: 3475
DeltaBlue: 3925
Crypto: 3112
RayTrace: 4104
EarleyBoyer: 5980
RegExp: 1342
Splay: 7590

FireFox v3.0.10
Score: 287

Richards: 257
DeltaBlue: 314
Crypto: 163
RayTrace: 253
EarleyBoyer: 352
RegExp: 197
Splay: 692

As you can see Chrome’s v2.x release spanks tha pants off FireFox v3 in raw JavaScript performance. Of course, Chrome doesn’t offer the full experience of FireFox. Namely, it’s lacked extensions. While I appreciate the speed provided (and yes… GMail IS faster in Chrome) I don’t know that I can live without Adblock or Better Gmail 2. However, if Chrome gets extensions prior to the latest beta of FireFox making out of the door then it could be a serious contenter.

Read more about Chrome on it’s features page and if you feel so inclinded grab a copy for yourself from the download site.