Today, Sunny Gosain (pictured), the VP of Development of software developer Compiere shared with me his perspective on Google's new web browser.

Fastest!

So let's start with the good news. For the open source ERP developer, Google Chrome is 5% faster than Firefox 3.0, 20% faster than Internet Explorer 8 and an order of magnitude faster than IE 7. But to be fair, Gosain admits that Compiere's Web application is still 20 to 25% slower than its native Java application running on the desktop.

Compatible!

Because Compiere is using Google Web Toolkit to convert its Java application into Javascript, Gosain suspects that Google developers have optimised Chrome for GWT code. Another surprise is that Compiere's Web application ran almost without any modification - just 1 line to change!

"That came as a good surprise as it usually takes a month to qualify our Web application and it's 10 million lines of source code for a new Web browser. We have to make sure the aesthetic of our application in the new browser, the client interactivity, the performance and the security. With Google Chrome, the rendering is pixel perfect", Sunny Gosain explains.

Insecure!

However the bad news is... well very bad. Google Chrome is based on the same old Webkit libraries used by a previous version of Apple's Safari browser that are vulnerable to the Carpet Bomb attacks by which the browser does not require user permission prior to a download and could result in malicious code being installed.

So until Google fixes that serious security flaw, I strongly advise you to stay away from Chrome. By the way Apple did fix the same Carpet Bomb flaw on Safari last June. So I'm sure, Google is coming out soon with a work-around. But I just wonder why Google decided to launch Chrome knowing this serious security flaw exists. What do you think?