Google says new update brings largest gain in Chrome browser performance in years

Global search engine giant Google has announced the “final” Chrome release of 2020 with a slew of features and many under-the-hood improvements that together represent the largest gain in performance for its flagship browser. The update will be available for all users over the next few weeks, Matt Waddell who is director for product for Chrome said in a blog post.

The under-the-hood improvements are the big takeaway(s) here. They are part of Google’s ongoing efforts to make Chrome faster while utilizing less resources. Chrome is infamous for being a major resource-hog bringing even very powerful PCs with gobs of RAM to their knees when pushed to the edge. On laptops, it is known to lessen battery life.

With the new update, Chrome will seemingly “prioritize” active tabs reducing CPU usage by up to 5x and extending battery life by up to 1.25 hours. The start-up process will be “speedier” by up by 25% and pages will load 7% faster while consuming less power and RAM. On Android, Chrome will load pages near “instantaneously” while navigating backward and forward.

All this, especially the positive impact on CPU and battery, is of course based on Google’s internal benchmarks. It would be interesting to see how the update adds up in the real world when put to test by power users.

Moving on, the final Chrome release of 2020 also brings a few new features all intended to get work done faster. To begin with, Google is bringing tab search to Chrome. Arriving on Chromebooks first (and other desktops soon), the feature will allow users to quickly get to x, y or z tab even with multiple Chrome windows opened. This should be handy for those who are in the habit of having way too many tabs up and running most of the time.

The other feature coming to Chrome is a set of actions you can perform directly from the address bar. For instance, you can now “edit passwords,” or “delete history,” directly from the bar. This is coming to desktops first. Lastly, Chrome is getting card based navigation scheme on the new tab page designed to take you straight to recently-visited and related content on the web quickly. Google is starting this with areas like cooking and shopping and plans to add entertainment to the list early next year.