Why Google's Chrome Browser is Great for Online Research

Heads up—this has nothing in particular to do with Sg, but I just had a lightbulb moment and wanted to share.

Google released a browser named (ironically, I think) “Chrome”. My first impression was that it was light both in terms of features (not necessarily a bad thing) and system usage (definitely a good thing). I like the ability to treat individual sites (like Gmail or Reader) as separate applications, with their own launch and taskbar icons, but it's not like you can't do that with Firefox (my default browser). Chrome seemed nifty, but nothing to write a blog post about.

But this morning I needed to run a search for securities filings on 10kWizard. As usual, I logged in and ran my search. As usual, the first page contained twenty results and a link to the next page of results. As usual, I started center-clicking (to open links in a new tab; same as Ctrl-clicking) on the individual results. I clicked on the first one, the second, the third and the fourth. And then I decided to put Chrome to the test.

See, when I do this in Firefox, I only open four or five results in separate tabs at once. Things start to bog down while the pages and all their accompanying javascript load and render. In fact, it would be hard to click more than four or five because the browser becomes largely unresponsive until most of the new tabs are fully loaded. For those playing along at home, that's three or four lengthy pauses before I can view a full 20 results individually.

But Chrome works a little differently than Firefox. For Chrome, each tab runs as a separate process. Instead of using one browser as the gateway through which all of your browsing needs are funneled to your computer's processor (which is how it works with Firefox and Internet Explorer), you're using as many browsers as tabs you have open, and each has direct access to the resources it needs.

Have you ever experienced a browser slowdown because of something processor-intensive that is happening in one tab? When that happens, you can still work in other programs (like your word processor or email) with little or no noticeable problem, even though your browser is thrashing around like a drowning man. With Chrome, each tab is another program, you see.

So how does this work in practice? Instead of stopping at four or five new tabs, I worked quickly down the row and opened all twenty search result documents in separate tabs. The search results tab never lagged at all. It was like my clicks had no effect at all (even though twenty new tabs were working away in the background).

And so what does that mean? Probably not much for most people. But I'm frequently working in a bunch of tabs at once. And I do mean “working”—it's not just that I'm browsing in one tab while Gmail and CNN sit idly in background tabs. At times, I do a fair amount of online research. Anything that makes that easier is appreciated, but this particular change goes beyond a marginal improvement.

Let's make an analogy between online and library research. Tabbed browsing makes online research more like the physical version. When you find a reference in a book to something that looks promising, you can leave the original book open on the table and go get the new resource. Similarly, when you find something interesting in one tab, you can leave it open while you go check out the link. If you had to do library research the way you do online research without tabs, you would have to put each book away before opening another one. Need to go back? Put away the new book, look at your research notes, and go find the prior resource.

When you add the speed of the internet, the process changes qualitatively. Getting a new resource doesn't mean humping it back to the stacks to parse the Library of Congress numbering system. You just click to open something in another tab. Find a page that links to ten new promising sources? Open them all! This makes things faster, yes. But it also opens the door to the kind of intuitive research that can only be pulled off in the real world by people who are really good with a library. I mean like doctoral candidate good.

See, not every new link in a research chain is accompanied by a hyperlink, and sometimes new links aren't even explicitly spelled out in the source you're looking at. Sometimes you make a connection between something that seemed unrelated, and a flash of intuition tells you that developing that connection will get you closer to your goal. Maintaining that flash connection long enough to go pull resources in a library is hard. Maintaining it long enough to chase down the new idea in a browser without tabs while remembering where to pick back up with the research when you're done with the chase is near impossible. But it is possible with tabs, and faster than using hard-copy resources.

So that's why tabbed browsing is awesome for online research. But what about Chrome?

Chrome has eliminated entire seconds of waiting from the process! This sounds trivial, but it isn't. Not for me, anyway. Anybody who is serious about their online research can tell you that, in the early information mapping phase of a project, intuitive tabbed browsing happens fast, and your collection of open tabs may represent several parallel threads of thought. Ideally, you're working at your potential, keeping as many threads active as your nerdy brain will allow. Under those circumstances, seconds lost are an absolute killer. If you have time to wonder whether you have received any new email or to tune in to the conversation happening in the hallway, you have dropped something. Maybe something important.

Think of it this way: a pebble, like a second, is a small thing. But when it is in the wrong place at a track meet, it can mean the difference between victory and a trip to the first aid tent. (I guess it does, anyway. I don't so much know anything about “running”.)

I'm sure that Chrome's designers were thinking of preventing the occasional total-browser crashes or memory vortices. And that's good and all. But the resulting everyday marginal result is the removal of an artificial limit on my ability to effectively use online resources. It's like Chrome removes some of the red lights from my commute (but without the mayhem and pedestrian squishage that would result from actually removing the traffic signals from North Avenue). Google Chrome team, I salute you!

(Also handy for my purposes is the option to "Close tabs opened by this tab" when you right-click on a tab. That means that I can close out a line of thought without leaving a bunch of detritus tabs open for me to wonder about when I return from lunch.)

I think I read somewhere that Chrome is not the only browser that offers this advantage, and I look forward to its implementation in Firefox. (The web without the AdBlock extension for Firefox burns my eyes.) But for now, I'll be using Chrome for my online research.