I'd like to tell you about a small company called Google and their innocent plan to take over the world. Everyone's always intrigued when Google comes out with a new product, such as Gmail, Google Maps and the upcoming phone platform Android. But today, we are allowed to bask in Google's most recent glory, the "one unified box serves all your browsing needs." It's called Chrome.

At first glance, it looks like a very stripped down web browser with a minimalist GUI (no title, menu or permanent status bar) with a UNIX-inspired design. Interesting, I suppose. I do long for a web browser that is capable of handling my uber-tabbed browsing with minimal footprint. Unfortunately, this is not the case. I have 15 toolbar bookmarks that I check every morning as party of my daily ritual. Firefox 3 took about 20 seconds to finish rendering all these pages; Chrome took 25. That's not too significant, but kudos to Firefox for running 5 add-ons at the time.

Is Chrome as slim as it seems? I once again launched my bookmarks and went to my Task Manager. Much to my surprise, Chrome separates each tab into an independent process (Firefox is one no matter how many windows/tabs you have). Now this could be innovative. If one site causes a tab to crash in Firefox, it will most likely take down the entire process, killing all my instances of Firefox (EPIC FAIL). In comparison, Chrome might crash that one tab and leave everything standing. But wait, if each tab is its own process, how is Chrome holding them all together? I immediately thought that no matter what, a killed process would take the rest down like a stack of cards without some kind of master process managing the whole browser. Turns out, Chrome was running 17 processes (with another Google Updater process) for having 15 tabs. Looks like I've got two guardian angels watching over my internet experience. But here's the meaty part: Google Chrome was using 53% more system resources than Firefox 3 while viewing the same pages. Firefox was using 199,444KB (194.77MB) of RAM while added up, Chrome was using 305,592KB (298.43MB) without counting the Google Updater. This is where you say, "Damn, homey!" Indeed.

Now let's talk about features. Google is a firm rooted in the industry of advertisement. One of the things we hate the most about the Internet is advertisements. Mozilla's greatest innovation for its Gecko platform is the ability to have add-ons, Add-ons like Adblock Plus. Unfortunately, Google will most likely not allow anyone to use their browser and block their livelihood. So the speed difference I mentioned earlier may be related to having to render all those ads on my bookmarks. Another feature that I'm noticing other users mention is the automatic import feature. During an installation, we all want to just hit 'Next' until it's done. If you choose the default installation method for Chrome, it will automatically search your other browers for saved information, bookmarks, passwords and history and import it into itself. Thanks for scanning my computer for private information, Google! What I will say about Chrome's benefits is the new tab page that shows you a thumbnail selection of your most viewed pages, along with a list of your most recently created bookmarks. One nifty feature doesn't save this browser from its failures.

Lastly, the most controversial part of Chrome: the EULA.

10.1 Google gives you a personal, worldwide, royalty-free, non-assignable and non-exclusive license to use the software provided to you by Google as part of the Services as provided to you by Google (referred to as the “Software” below). This license is for the sole purpose of enabling you to use and enjoy the benefit of the Services as provided by Google, in the manner permitted by the Terms.

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

In short, this allows Google to have intellectual property rights to everything you view, create and type in Chrome. They will know every website you browse, how often you check your bookmarks and your blog that you created in Chrome? Google owns it. This claim to propriety over all material that comes in and out of the software makes this a very inappropriate program for information-sensitive and confidential work environments. No government office, educational institute or anyplace there will be publicly shared computer access would want a browser that has the opportunity to phone home with its recent activity. How is this browser not considered some form of malware? We're not at a loss for free web browsers. There isn't a premium of having a low profile, secure and scalable web browser. If there was, I could see having an advertisement-based free browser. But this isn't the case and I would not recommend this browser to anyone who has sensitive information or cares about IP rights to their own work. Now you may be saying, "But it's still in beta and Google can improve its performance." Everything about Google is in beta as a tongue-in-cheek way of saying, "We're always improving our products." That's great, but there's no denying that Google is the next Microsoft and I'm getting this browser off my computer now.