After downloading and installing chrome, here are my first thoughts.
1. Its fast, but when many tabs are open with flash it slows down a lot.
2. Its simple design turns me off. Dont get me wrong I love simple design, but when I feel like more functionality is lost it crosses the line. I’m used to Firefox with custom add-ons such as firebug and such. I have the feeling that more browsing tools are being taken away.
3. I have the feeling in the back of my mind that Google is using the browser to monitor browsing habits just like many think is happening with Analytics. This may not be true, but one has to wonder if rankings may depend on how often a site is visited using Chrome. I’m not saying this is how they will rank sites in the future, but could be a factor.
Those were my first thoughts on the beta of Chrome. It has potential using the webkit engine if it was more customizable and I didn’t feel like half of my browsing experience was taken away.