Dear Chrome, Slow Your Roll ⇥ massivegreatness.com

MG Siegler:

This morning, I mentioned that with each new build, Chrome for OS X seems to be getting a bit less stable and a bit more bloated. No big deal, I tend to send such bitchy tweets before I’ve had any caffeine. But I noticed something a little odd in the responses: no one disagreed with me.

In fact, nearly everyone said they had been noticing the exact same thing recently. And it apparently isn’t just with OS X, it’s the Windows build of Chrome too. As the product progresses, for many of us, it’s getting worse.

I switched back to Safari when the developer build of Safari 6 was posted back in February, so I haven’t used Chrome for a very long time in Google version numbers. Last night, I had to download a copy for an art installation I’m working on¹, and I came to the same conclusion as Siegler. Typing in the omnibox is slow, scrolling is jerky, and the fakey Safari-esque back/forward swiping gesture is horribly hacky. All told, it simply feels cumbersome and slow. It’s the Firefox story all over again.