Google Chrome 5.0

Google Chrome is a web browser that is lightweight and secure. Chrome has been a success for Google, and the Mac version has been playing catch-up for some time.

Nowadays, the Mac version has made some progress and added most of the features available in the Windows version. Perhaps the single most desired feature in a web browser is its speed. Chrome is, arguably, one of the two fastest browsers, alongside with Safari 5. If you switch from Firefox you will see how much faster Chrome really is. If you launch Firefox and Chrome for the first time at the same time, I am pretty sure that Firefox will take almost twice to load a full website. Chrome also make Flash video and applications perform better than my older version of Firefox.

Feature-wise, Chrome is a very complete web browser. It comes with an array of safety measures to prevent malware attacks from both users and websites. It has a filtering system powered by Google as well as a secure password database. Most application plug-ins should work with Chrome really soon, if they aren't working already. Some third-party video players won't work with Chrome though, and that is a bit of nuisance, but with time, it will all come around. After all, the Internet giant is behind it. One thing I particularly like about Chrome is that it doesn't have a search field next to the address bar. If you want to carry out a search on Google, you simply type what you want in the address bar and you will be taken to a Google search. Auto-complete is also a nice feature that saves a lot of time when visiting frequented sites.

Graphically, Chrome for Mac is a really clean application. There are no annoying toolbars or ads. You can add a bookmark bar to access your most-visited sites

Google Chrome now supports extensions, which are little applications that can be added to the browser to support additional functionality. This support for extensions was first added for the Windows version, but, thankfully, now we have it on Mac.