Safari beats Chrome Beta in browser race

Chrome 4.0.249.30 beta has recently been upgraded for all platforms, including Mac and Windows. In a race organized by Computerworld, Chrome, known for its speed, turned out to be slower than Safari, but twice as fast as Mozilla's Firefox.

Chrome: Still standing strong
Four browsers were tested for Mac, and Chrome earned a second place for itself. It rendered JavaScript 10 times faster than Opera 10.10 could, and twice as fast as Firefox 3.6 Beta 4. This is Mozilla's most recent version of its open-sourced browser.

But it could hardly compete with Apple's Safari, which was 12 times faster than Chrome. It does not come as a surprise, since Mac and Safari belong to Apple, and one can expect the Apple team to have a few tricks up their sleeves to make the two click.

Google Chrome's Beta is now available for both Mac and Linux users, with full extensions support. The Google team had received specific requests for these features. The new Beta is pretty much the same, along with a few tweaks that it earlier required.

Better than Safari on Windows
But where Windows is concerned, the situation is very different. Chrome is still the fastest browser on Windows, while Safari takes up the second place. Computerworld had tested five browsers in September, and Chrome had taken the top spot.

In case of Windows, it makes JavaScript 9 times faster than Internet Explorer, five times faster than Opera 10, and two and a half times faster than Firefox 3.5, and lastly, 30 percent faster than Safari.

Both Chrome and Safari use the open source WebKit browser engine.

The scores for this race were calculated by averaging out the results that the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark suite provided on the Mac OS X 10.6.

Great start-up, Microsoft follows suit
On Chrome's launch this time, Google did not brag about the speed of their browser on Mac like they have repeatedly done in the past for Windows platform. It is evident that their own test trials provided them similar results. Instead, they focused on Chrome's instantaneous start-up on Mac.

In the official Google blog, Brian Rakowski, a Chrome product manager said, "As you might expect, the speed of Google Chrome for Mac is something we're very proud of. Try installing the beta and see how fast it launches -- there's hardly even time for the icon in the dock to bounce!"

While the browser makers have been drooling over the performance of JavaScript for over a year now, the Microsoft team has maintained a snooty stand. The company declared that this is all a “browser drag race” they refuse to participate in. But they have realized the potential of JavaScript, and in a recent statement said that the news Internet Explorer 9 would prove itself in the SunSpider scores, and remove the JavaScript gap.

The Google Chrome Os is coming out next year, and leaving alone the hype that it has created, it remains to be seen how their own browser works with their own OS.