Mozilla Fires Back At Google: Our JavaScript Engine Runs Faster

Everyone's running speed tests to see how Google's new Chrome browser measures up.Google during its launch event tested Chrome against Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 and found that Chrome (77.28 milliseconds) was about three times faster loading local static page files than IE (220.64 milliseconds).

I used WebWait.com to test how quickly Chrome 0.2, Firefox 3, Safari 3.1, and Internet Explorer 7 loaded the InformationWeek.com home page. The results for three page loads averaged were: Firefox (5.21s) Safari (6.34s), Chrome (6.48s), Internet Explorer (8.90s).

CNET's Stephen Shankland ran a series of JavaScript benchmarks designed by Google and found that "Chrome clearly trounced the competition." ZDNet's Ed Burnette ran the same test suite and found that "Chrome is 42x faster than IE7, 9x faster than FF3."

LifeHacker tested browser startup time, JavaScript & CSS, and memory usage for Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. Chrome for the startup test, Firefox and Chrome tied for JavaScript test, and Firefox won the memory test.

Not to be outdone, Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich posted data from a speed test that pitted Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine against Mozilla's new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which should appear in Firefox 3.1. The results: TraceMonkey was 1.28x faster than Chrome's V8 running under Windows XP (on a Mac Mini) and 1.19x faster when running under Windows Vista (on a MacBook Pro).

"Maybe we should rename TraceMonkey 'V10' ;-)," Eich quipped.

As always with such statistics, your mileage may vary. The real test is whether Chrome meets your needs and whether you enjoy using it more than other browsers. Personally, I'm going to stick with Firefox, at least until Chrome plug-ins start appearing.