In the age of smartphone and tablet browsing, speed matters. People want things to load quickly, especially on mobile devices where data plans are expensive and browsing speeds can be extremely slow if you’re away from Wi-Fi. This may explain why Google Chrome is officially the fastest browser in the world according to new benchmarks by Speedtest, unseating Apple’s Safari for the first time in the process. Chrome unseats Safari as the fastest browser but why?
Speed tests
It’s a surprise to nobody that most of us care deeply about our browsing speed. But which browsers are actually quickest? The folks at Webpagetest compiled data from 8 million sites on Chrome, Internet Explorer 11, Firefox and Safari. It turns out Chrome is the swiftest when it comes to loading webpages; its average page load time is 2.69 seconds.
Does speed matter?
We tend to believe that faster is better when it comes to most things in life. But does a faster web experience really make a difference for users? Of course it does! As you spend more time interacting with a website, a slower site can quickly turn into an annoyance. No one likes waiting for content to load or new pages to come up on screen. In fact, Google has confirmed that page speed is now one of their ranking factors.
Reasons behind Google Chrome being faster than other browsers
First off, Chrome doesn’t need to collect and maintain any data from your browsing behavior. Its rendering engine, Blink, doesn’t send any data back to Google’s servers—and neither does its JavaScript engine V8. It should come as no surprise that these two factors make Chrome incredibly fast. But are these features enough to give it a speed boost over other browsers like Firefox or Opera? Let’s look at some more reasons that help explain Google Chrome’s performance lead.
How to become faster while browsing
Most browsers open pages before they’re finished downloading. This usually isn’t a problem, except for those few occasions when you want to see what a page looks like before it finishes loading. In that case, hold down Shift and tap Reload or press Ctrl+F5 (or Command+Shift+R on Mac). This tells your browser to wait until your page has completely loaded before displaying it.