A couple days ago Google released the demo of their new browser, called Chrome. I downloaded it and tried it out (it’s Windows only for now, but Mac and Linux versions are on the way), and it’s not only the fastest browser I’ve ever used but one of the fastest applications in general.

It literally starts up in 2 seconds (or less). Only the built in Windows accessories like Notepad and Calculator load this fast (for me anyway). Firefox takes at least 3-5 seconds to start up and then another 3-5 (or more if it’s trying to piss me off) to get Gmail to load.

Chrome has some innovative new features like tabs that run independent of each other (so a site can only crash a tab, not the whole browser) and a really cool “new tab” page that shows your most frequently visited sites, recent bookmarks and even recently closed tabs in case you closed something by accident. But it’s also very lean in the features department. The interface is very minimalistic. The tab bar and title bar have been combined and the address bar has the bare minimum of features you would expect: back/forward, reload, bookmark, address field, page options menu and settings menu. And that’s it.

You can’t add plugins or themes and there’s really very little in the way of customization. It’s meant to be a simple, fast and stable browser that just gets out of your way.

It’s still in beta so some sites might not work, especially ones with a lot of Javascript and Ajax going on. Google created en entirely new Javascript engine called V8 so there’s still a lot of bugs to work out. But Google apps like Gmail and Reader are lightning fast. If you’re like me and have Gmail open all the time, you can even create an “application shortcut” for it that will open it in Chrome, with no interface at all, as if it’s a standalone app.

For more about the story behind Chrome, why Google built it and the technology they used, check out Google Chrome: The Book (illustrated by Scott McCloud).