I have recently been looking at Internet Explorer 8 but this morning I eagerly downloaded the Beta of Google Chrome, Google’s Web Browser, from http://www.google.com/chrome/ and followed the installation which was painless and so far I really like what I see. In particular the clean simple interface and the clutter free desktop are particularly pleasing.

The not so great stuff first, like others have reported, I received the following error and Chrome refused to operate the first time I tried it. Bear in mind this is Beta software so errors are likely to occur.

The message above states:

“The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005).Click on OK to terminate the application.”

A workaround found on the Symantec Forums (as I am running Symantec Endpoint Protection) , it is to edit the registry (make sure you have a backup first!), then edit the Start DWORD to 4 under the key HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Sysplant then Reboot.

Once this problem was side stepped the browser started up fine and feels pretty responsive too - I especially like the preview of the most visited pages and the lack of clutter on the toolbar and other areas is welcome too. The recent bookmarks list is useful too.

Certain web pages experience a similar problem that IE8 does but that is probably down to the web pages themselves rather than the browser, for example my own blog at www.jasonslater.co.uk has a repeated background image that IE7 and Firefox handle correctly but Chrome has a different idea of how it should look.

The incognito feature could be useful, especially if working in public areas, so pages you visit do not appear in browser or search history. You can read more about incognito mode at http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=95464&hl=en-GB

The unified (there we go again!) address bar combines a number of functions including the standard URL entry as well as acting as a Google Search box, see the YouTube video below for ten features of Google Chrome.

Further Reading

Other articles talking about Google Chrome include:

• Google Chrome (BETA) for Windows
• Fix for application failed to initialize (0xc0000005):Google chrome
• Stephen’s Blog
• Google Chrome: Initial Reports Round-up
• Google Chrome Accessibility
• Google Chrome coming to Android
• My First Impressions of Google Chrome
• Playing with Google Chrome – Too Simplistic or Perfectly Minimalist?
• Google Chrome: The Reality
• Google Blogoscoped