I have a confession to make. I have not yet downloaded and installed Google’s Chrome browser. Shame on me.

I’ve been tuning into the excited babble coming out of various discussions forums and Twitter in recent days, but I still can’t motivate myself to “make the switch”.

I realise that this stance places my reputation as an “early adopter”, such that it is, on the line, but my question is why should I bother with Chrome, and why do I need another browser anyway? I mean, what’s wrong with the one I have?

It’s almost five years since I first started using Firefox.

At that point, aside from Netscape and Opera, both of which left much to be desired performance wise, and were well and truly on the fringe of use anyway, the only browser of note on the Windows platform was Internet Explorer.

IE6 at that. Referring to IE6 as a browser of note wasn’t saying a lot however. It was riddled with security vulnerabilities, and its support for web standards and CSS was woeful to say the least.

On top of that there was rampant speculation that Microsoft was going to completely abandon stand alone browser development, and incorporate what is now IE7 into its then next operating system.

This effectively meant the only way to obtain a “new and improved” Microsoft web browser was to buy the new operating system.

So when it came to finding a new browser in the latter part of 2003, the options were somewhat limited. Slog it out with the sub-standard IE6, or wait - very patiently - for the new Windows operating system to make an appearance.

Some choice.

Therefore the arrival of Firefox, with its brand new features, superior security, and a hitherto unseen level of standards support, was just what savvy web users had been crying out for.

The web of 2008 however is light years removed the web of 2003, at least in terms of web browser options, and in addition to Firefox, Safari and now Opera, also make for fine web browsing alternatives, both of which, incidentally, I avail myself of.

There has been talk of a Google browser of some sort for years, but now that it has arrived, I am asking myself “so what”?

What does Chrome offer, what does it do, that the other contemporary browsers don’t? What makes it so… dazzling? I’ve heard it is super fast, but then again Firefox isn’t exactly sluggish.

Tabbed browsing? Standards compliance? No, been there done that. A competitive alternative to IE? Nope, I found one years ago.

Google Chrome is, I am certain, a very good browser, and I’m sure I will try it out one day, but until a compelling reason to do so sooner manifests itself, I am, for the moment, just going to have to endure those “laggard” taunts.