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It’s about time: Google vows to fix the worst thing about its Chrome browser

Published May 19th, 2015 8:20PM EDT
Google Chrome Memory Leak Fix

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Chrome is an awesome browser but it also has severe memory leak issues that can chew up resources on both your PC and your smartphone. KitGuru highlights some recent comments made by the Chrome for Android team during a Reddit AMA that show Google’s engineers are very much aware of Chrome’s memory leak problems and are vowing to fix it.

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“We are actively working on reducing battery usage and we are looking into when Chrome is in the foreground and in the background,” one team member explained. “Since its inception Chrome has been focusing on security and performance of the web across all supported platforms. Performance sometimes has come at the cost of resource usage, but given the importance of the mobile platform this is one of the top things we are looking into.”

And thankfully, it sounds like it won’t just be Chrome for Android getting an overhaul — the Chrome team is working on some fixes for desktop Chrome users as well.

“We are profiling Chrome to improve our start-up speed and proactively fighting memory bloat and memory leaks,” a team member told Reddit. “For example, this year the first gesture latency and mean input latency has decreased steadily.”

While this all sounds good, we’ll definitely be taking a wait-and-see approach. Hopefully this is something Google will tell us more about at Google I/O at the end of the month.

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.