Google Chrome: faster than a flying potato
By Donald Melanson 
posted May 5th 2010 4:36PM
posted May 5th 2010 4:36PM
Google's never been shy to make claims that Chrome is the fastest browser on the planet, but it's truly pulled out all the stops to drive that point home for its latest beta. Rather than rely on some simple benchmarks, Google decided to test Chome against some other things that are fast -- namely, a potato cannon, sound waves, and lightning. We won't spoil all the surprise for you, but you can rest assured that Chrome comes out looking pretty good, and that everything else gets a little messy. Head on past the break to check out the speed tests for yourself, as well as the requisite making-of video.
Love those Google peeps. Keep on keepin on!
@BlueSpud45 Especially the female one. Cute!!
@BlueSpud45
i know beta 5 is humming mighty nicely on my pc's and laptop
@Tammacho
this is why you can't get any dates!
@BlueSpud45 Would like to know what kind of machine it's running on...
But damn, that's some good marketing all the same!
@BlueSpud45
they dont lie. it's my daily browser for a reason.
@BlueSpud45
Right on bud! These giys are the model for other companies. When they do something they do it right and make it appealing for people!
@BlueSpud45 They have great fun over @Google wanna apply?
@hero785
love the Idaho potatoes! :)
@BlueSpud45 no, this was a little too much to take. bad video.
@skyblaze
also, all you android fans can download this skin! its great!
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/oeljdmeofcikjblcoehpmdnooimalbmj
@skyblaze Do you also have a fancy browser for special occasions?
@The Madman They say on the blog post that it's a Macbook Pro running Windows 7.
@BlueSpud45
I love chromium, I use the bleeding edge builds.
@sinai
Why would you want a date when you can have a potato?
@BlueSpud45
Coolest Video I've seen in a while (period)
@BlueSpud45
Imagine where the Palm Pre could be if they used such intelligent advertising...
@who said what
IDAHO! WOOT! I'm from Idaho. Our potatoes are the best! How funny would it be to have the Google logo on a box of Idaho potatoes "Google Tested and Approved" HAHA
@emopoops Hot potatoes.. one should realize that chrome now is
@BlueSpud45 Agreed this is brilliant marketing and Google continue to innovate in many different ways.
Unfortunately for them, Opera is definitely faster!
i did try it my self as they say, and it was slower then IE and FIREFOX.
but im using opera which isn't perfect to say the least.
when will there be a perfect browser out there!?!
@BlueSpud45
except the advert is fake, the page is loaded locally.
they type the url then.. zoom on the page loading.. yup. file:///C:// ...
@bilboa
It's not fake.
Everybody knows the whole internet is Google's C: drive.
@iBuferd HERESY!!! Maine potatoes are superior in every way!!!
@Unveryfried Well it's more like /dev/sda1 but anyways... :P
@BlueSpud45
To me what there saying is true Chrome is pretty fast compared to IE plus it finally got add ons
keep it up google
Poor potatoe!
Potato. Oops.
@Siryj Good job Mr. Vice President.
No problem. On a serious note, it's time to be patriotic. It's time to pay taxes.
@Siryj Paying taxes is a big fuckin deal yo
@metric It was a joke. Nothing serious like.
Great Scott! Another ridiculous commercial
@swimomatic Do you have a problem laughing?
It is really nice to see how those developers have found another way to release their stress - I envy them.
@swimomatic
I beg to differ, it is actually the most ingenious way to test the speed of the browser. In fact, from this day on, I hereby declare the speed of a browser to be measured by the amount of potates it takes to shoot from potato cannons times the loading time. Since I conveniently had a potato cannon laying around, I aquired the following results:
Chrome = 1 potato
Firefox = 3 potatos
Opera = 2 potatoe
Safari = 5 potatos
IE8 = ran out of potatos...
@smartmouth
I bet your family is going to have a lot of fries today!
@smartmouth you sir are quite hilarious
@swimomatic
Look closely at the video. In each instance the mouse is hovering over the "forward" button.
Why is that?
Of course it will go quick if you are just going to a page that has already been loaded.
Questions Questions....
@snow4558 They aren't concerned about page "load times" as in the delays caused by the internet (DNS Queries, Server Latency, etc.)... They are simply demonstrating rendering time (which is the only thing completely in the browsers control)...
Therefore the test is valid (even if they are loading the entire page from cache, chrome is rendering a page significantly faster than any other browser right now (that I'm aware of), especially if that page using javascript)
I didn't necessarily mean ridiculous in a bad way, typed it up way too quickly on my way to a final
If you look closely at the video, Allrecipes.com shows a directory in the C drive in the address bar. They cheated!
@esposimi
This isn't an advertisement for fast internet connection, by having a local site they've removed all non-chrome variables from the equation and they are testing pure rendering time.
Chrome can't control your connection speed, but you can rest assured that you will never be slowed down by your browser's rendering speed. If you think it's easy to render a site ultra fast, do the same test with IE or Firefox and you'll see that Chrome is dramatically faster.
@smartmouth I'm not really sure if a unit called Potato-seconds make any sense. Wouldn't it depend on the speed that your cannon can shoot potatoes? And since you keep that constant between trials, you can really just measure it in seconds...Unless of course you meant potatoes per second, which actually makes sense.
@smartmouth
"Chrome = 1 potato
Firefox = 3 potatos
Opera = 2 potatoe
Safari = 5 potatos
IE8 = ran out of potatos..."
Kessel Run = Less than 12 oranges?
This is Brilliant!
@naz I did love it too and I like Google. It's also brilliant because it looks good, but they got to chose the distances these things went, so Chrome could be slower than a potato gun if it were positioned closer to the monitor and if Chrome were just a bit slower than it is they could back the gun up, so it's an "unlosable" test in my mind, but I still like it.
Also, on the unlosable point, in the sound test, I'm no physicist, but that test might have shown that Chrome is slower than sound waves. The sound waves were illustrated with paint, which would've required extra force (force = mass x acceleration IIRC) so the mass has to come into account here as its making gravity and the sound work infinitely more in their favor....i think.
Didn't watch it, but it looks sweet!
@pavlindrom
so what is the point of your comment? If you do not want to take the time to watch it then why even comment on it?
One of those who just likes comments? is it a fetish?
@pavlindrom Are you on an iPad?. Good commercial.
@krunal126 I was thinking the same thing