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Chrome boosts page load speeds with clever bits of code

Prioritizing most-used functions has led to speed increases across the board.

Thomas Trutschel via Getty Images

Google's main selling point for Chrome has always been simple: speed. With the browser's latest update, 64-bit Chrome 53 and 32-bit Chrome 54 on Windows, the internet juggernaut is upping performance again. By using Microsoft's Profile Guided Optimization -- a part of Visual Studio, as noted by TechCrunch -- the browser has boosted new tab page loads by 14.8 percent and page loads by 5.9 percent. In terms of firing the browser up for the first time (people actually close it?), that's seen the most improvement of all, with Google claiming 16.8 percent faster startup time.

It's all calculated by looking at which functions are used most often and optimizing them over less-used functions, Sébastien Marchand writes on the Chromium blog. More speed is always appreciated, sure, but decreasing the browser's impact on battery life would be awesome too. There's always December's version for that, though.