I find this interestin= g. I have been comparing web browsers over the past few days — Opera, = Chrome (Google), Firefox (Mozilla), and Internet Explorer (Microsoft). = I have run the comparison battery of tests on two platforms: Windows 7 a= nd Linux (Fedora 11/GNOME). I have run them on three different hardware= platforms, from old and slow to very up-to-date. Generally, the hardwa= re has the impact you would expect, but otherwise it doesn't change = the relative performance comparisons between the different browsers.

Here's the scoop. Chrome and Opera are in a category all by t= hemselves. Depending on the tests, both run everything tested correctly= and both are fast compared to the others. Chrome is faster, generally = about 10% faster than Opera. (In various tests, Chrome's speed adva= ntage is 5%-30% over Opera.) Remember, this is a test battery developed= by Google Chrome. Compared to these two, Firefox is a distant = second place. It runs *almost all* (but not quite all) of the performan= ce tests. It's speed is less than 20% of that of Opera and Chrome. = (Said differently: Firefox takes about five times as long to get the te= st completed.) Internet Explorer isn't even in the hunt. I= t flat-out fails or cannot complete several of the tests. Those it doe= s complete, its speed disadvantage is enormous. Internet Explorer'= s speed is about 1/4th of that of Firefox, and it is around 2%-3% of tha= t of Chrome and Opera. Obviously, I only tried Internet Explore= r on Windows. But I tested Chrome, Firefox and Opera on both Windows an= d Linux platforms. In general, they each perform better on Windows than= on Linux, but the difference is not significant. (The difference is le= ss than the gap between Opera and Chrome on the one hand, and Firefox on= the other — by a very wide margin.) You can find the Google C= hrome-sponsored battery of browser tests here: http://www.whatbrowser.org/en/= more/ (and probably there are comparable pages in other languages).= Now here's an interesting point: Between Opera and Chrome,= Opera supports a much wider variety of hardware. In fact, Google only = natively supports Macintosh and Windows. Linux versions are available b= ut only because of the open source community (not from Google, specifica= lly). It's also interesting, I think, to notice that on the= ir http://www.w= hatbrowser.org pages Google tends to overlook Opera. On some pages = (e.g., where to get the various browsers) they do include it. But on ot= her pages — specifically, the animation "What Is A Browser," = Opera is completely omitted. It's almost as if Google wants really = to hold up Chrome to comparison only to Firefox and Internet Explorer. = It beats these handily. But to compare it to a close competitor, Opera,= well that's something Google seems to leave out. Hmmm. ]]>=