Browsers: Chrome vs Iron

Well, this was going to be a Chrome review of sorts, but after a very short time using it I've moved on to another browser so it's now less of a review than a comparison post.

The rest of the pack

I've used Internet Explorer (IE) for most of my browsing years, simply because it was bundled with Windows. Recently I was doing some web development and (a) my browser (IE7) wasn't quite cutting and (b) I needed to test the website in multiple browsers to ensure compatibility with them. I installed Firefox and Chrome and (later) IE8.

  IE: My main issue with IE7 was that it lacked some features the other browsers had, such as web developer tools/plugins. (After acquiring IE8 later, it turns most of those missing features have now also been adopted by Microsoft... imagine that!) In terms of displaying websites, IE in general isn't as compliant as other browsers; this means that where other browsers display website components as expected, IE can give unexpected results, meaning that extra coding is required to deal with IE's many quirks.

  Firefox: Firefox has plenty of handy add-ons, one of which came in very handy during web development: Firebug. I won't go into details, but it's a developer's dream. Unfortunately, after installing only a handful of add-ons in Firefox, the browser took very long to load (5+ seconds) and that is simply unacceptable.

  Chrome: During web development, I installed Chrome in order to test the site in what I expect may become a mainstream browser. I decided to jump in and give it a chance, abandoning IE. Chrome is supposed to use less memory and crash more gracefully, and more. Here are some issues I came across:
- pictures often didn't load (just showed a placeholder instead);
- slow site loading (could be due to safety settings);
- frequent failed page loads ('oops this page appears to be broken or missing');
- freezing to the extent that I couldn't access Chrome's own task manager;
- I can't set it to auto-load the home page upon opening a new tab;
- there isn't much in the way of options;
- a big intrusive prompt (almost) every time I try to download a file; this seems to have been addressed, however, in the latest release.

Iron

  So what is Iron? It's a web browser by SRWare that, just like Chrome, is based on the open source project called Chromium. Iron looks and feels pretty much like Chrome, with a key difference in mentality: it's all about privacy.

Chrome sends Google the following info:
- anything you type into the address bar, regardless of whether you manually submit it (by hitting Enter or clicking Go); this is how Chrome can give search suggestions as you type, by submitting data to its servers as you type'
- when and from where it was downloaded;
- details of crashes or failures;
Further:
- Chrome creates a unique identifier that could theoretically identify a user;
- Chrome remember exactly when it was installed;
- Chrome uses error pages from Google's own servers instead of local ones;
- Chrome installation includes installation of Google Updater;

Bottom line: Google does a lot of usage tracking. Apparently it's in the process of anonymizing collected data, so that the end user can't be linked to any data... yikes!

Iron scratches all of the above data collection, and in addition it has a built-in ad blocker.

A few of the above 'issues' can be overcome in Chrome in its options or with various tweaks or add-ons.

Now I'm no security freak, and I have nothing to hide browsing-wise. But in principal I'm against rampant data collection by Internet companies. Plus the existence of Google Updater on my system has always annoyed me. Hence my interest in Iron. So far it's been stable, fast, and without the bugs I encountered in the version of Chrome I'd been using in the last month.