I was quite curious to see what a fastest and more stable browser would look like, since IE 7 is, to my humble opinion, quite fast and stable… So I was not impressed at all by the speed and stability of Chrome. What positively surprised me is the user interface which I like very much. Rendering is good and there are plenty of good ideas, such as the various tab functions ("Close tabs to the right"; "Close tabs opened by this tab"), the peaceful file download function, incognito browsing to name just some…
Since the browser is committed to simplicity, it’s missing some cool functions other browsers are offering, but nothing which is really essential.
But there is a BUT! or even more than one….
User-only installation
First the installation. Chrome installs in the local AppData of each user profile. So any user without admin rights can install the browsers. On multi-user computers, you will end with as many Chrome installations as you have users on this PC. The advantage of not needing admin rights to install Chrome is over as soon as the user needs to install a plugin, such as Flash… At this stage, admin credentials are required. Your pleased users will soon get frustrated.
User preferences
Everything is stored under C:\Users\[YourUserName]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\ (for Vista) and C:\Documents and Settings\[YourUserName]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\ (for XP). This means that the user settings cannot roam and are bound to the machine where they have been done. So one roaming users (such as students) will have to repeat all her Chrome settings every time they are using another PC, including the bookmarks!
Stability and security
Chrome is supposed to be extremely stable. Even if a tab content is crashing, the other open tabs should be unaffected and the browser itself should resist like a rock…
Well, try to type the two characters :% in the address bar…
Well, it’s still a beta, isn’t it?
Sept. 19, 2008: Ok, I know, the Google guys corrected this bug in the next build, so you will probably no longer experience this nice crash…
Another concern is security… Well several posts indicate the Chrome uses a not patched Apple WebKit that make it vulnerable to Java bugs… I didn’t try to test this one
Privacy
User bookmarks and user browsing history are kept together in the history file in the …\User Data\Default\ folder. This file is a SQLite v3 database which is not manageable, unless you install SQLite browsing tools. A normal user will manage his/her bookmarks using the Chrome interface. Not a big deal. But for Google, this single database file containing both the user’s browsing history and bookmarks represents probably a huge advantage, because it can easily be consolidated and deeply analyzed if you let Google get this file. So the first setting I would configure when using Chrome is this one:

My non-concluding first impression
Google pure: cool and funny for home users
A bit perverse: Ask yourself: what is Google seeking for with Chrome…
Not a revolution, but plenty of excellent ideas; not yet suitable for roaming user, nor as a company corporate browser…