What can I say about Chrome that hasn’t already been said? There is so much hype floating around the web about it at the moment that its nearly impossible to not hear about it. Even the local newspapers here in NZ have been discussing it in their Technology sections.

It has captured the attention of a lot of people. Me included.

There are some things I do miss quite a lot. For example, the AdBlock Plus Firefox extension and integration with Google Bookmarks (you’d think that would’ve been a no brainer, but I guess not.) But on the whole I’m very impressed with it and I do admit that it has already become my default browser at work and at home for the time being.

There are a number of issues I do have with it. For instance, I can crash it without fail by viewing a YouTube video full screen, then returning back to normal mode. That causes not just the tab to lock up, but all Chrome tabs and windows. Including Application windows. I think this is mostly to do with the Adobe Flash Player and the way it interacts with Google Chrome.

There are other minor things I notice, but I over look most of them because this is a beta and it will improve as Google works on it. The last time I used a beta as my primary browser for any length of time was in the Mozilla Phoenix days. I didn’t use Firefox 2 until the product was so close to RC it may as well have been. Same applies to Firefox 3.0. I guess I have been spoiled.

Ironically, my biggest fear is that Google stops working on it now that its out in the open and with the code for all to see and pillage. In my “Better be better than beta” post, I lamented that the whole culture of releasing a beta and never a full release is starting to wear thin on me. Gmail has been a “beta” for over 4 years now, yet we use the second major public version of the application. I definitely do not want that for Chrome. This is a great little browser already and if they took the time to finish it, it could become a fantastic browser. I hope we one day see the “beta” tag come off and see a full 1.0 release one day soon.

Will it replace Firefox? No, not for me. When I’m on a marathon session at the computer, Firefox is still my browser of preference. Features such as the Firebug and Web Developer Toolbar extensions are very much a necessity to me. As are the Adblock Plus and NoScript extensions.

Again, same problem as with Firefox 3 betas, no integration with Google’s own toolbar services. No Google Bookmarks integration. Given its Google’s own browser, you would think this would be the perfect product to tie all their own services together.

What about you? Have you tried Chrome yet? What do you think of it so far? Its been 3 days, has it managed to grab your attention and impress you enough to keep using it? What do they need to fix in your opinion?