Google says that the latest version of the Chrome browser beats the macOS version of Apple’s Safari in benchmark tests.
The company has worked hard to improve the performance of Chrome because Google wants Mac owners to use its browser so Google can track them for advertising reasons.
Google Chrome is faster than Apple Safari in benchmarks
Google’s head of Chrome Engineering Max Christoff announced Monday that Chrome 99 is 7% faster than Safari in general tasks, and 15% quicker in graphics performance.
The latest version of the browser scores a 300 on Apple’s Speedometer benchmark system. Safari running on a MacBook Pro with an M1 Max processor scores 277 on the same test.
Google says the improvements came from implementing “ThinLTO” in Chrome 99, along with graphics optimizations.
Chrome does not win on privacy
Google doesn’t charge money for its browser. That’s because its business is advertising — it develops software and its eponymous search engine as a way of selling targeted ads.
As Safari and other browsers crack down on the use of cookies to track people for advertising purposes, Google has had to turn to a new user tracking system called Topics.
But Topics requires Chrome, which is why Google needs Mac users to install and use its browser: so it can track them for targeted advertising. This is clearly the reason the company poured so much time and effort into making Chrome faster than Safari.
