Chrome is now 'faster than ever,' and Google wrote a technical love letter to prove it

When Google Chrome first broke onto the web browser scene, it became an instant favorite for its speedy performance and modern aesthetics compared to contemporaries such as Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Almost 20 years later, the team behind Chrome claims it continues to offer the same exciting performance, and the results back that claim.

Google has now announced leaps in Chrome’s performance, tested through popular browser benchmarking tools, including Speedometer 3.1 and Jetstream 3. As per the announcement, Chrome’s scores have jumped a moderate 5% on Speedometer 3.1 compared to its scores from last year. Meanwhile, the cores increased by 10% on Jetstream, which Google has built in collaboration with Apple, Mozilla, and other maintainers of web browser engines. These tests were conducted on a MacBook Pro with an M5 chip running macOS 26.0.1.

The announcement adds that the efforts of the teams behind Chrome (and the Chromium engine) have paid off, as Chrome now performs the fastest it ever has, with a score of 61 in Speedometer. However, unlike last year, it isn’t making tall claims about the time users saved. For context, in its previous benchmarking announcement, Google had said that speed-related optimizations in Chrome helped save a total of 116 million hours, or roughly 116 adult human lifetimes, for all users combined.

In addition to owning its accomplishments, Google has shared details of what helped the team achieve faster performance than ever on Chrome. Google has mentioned several pipelines it has sped up and optimized to ensure faster loading and smoother browsing. Among the various changes, the team improved Chrome’s JavaScript engine, which was programmed to make smarter decisions, including shorter paths, especially for highly repetitive operations during web page loading.

JavaScript is a high-level language that makes web pages interactive. It runs directly in the browser and serves as a set of under-the-hood instructions that help different web page elements load. The JS Engine that Google worked on, however, ensures faster execution of these tasks.

The other change comes to WebAssembly, which runs low-level code that runs alongside JavaScript for demanding tasks, which may include AI-related tasks. Google says it improved the efficiency of handoff between JavaScript and WebAssembly by making the process more transparent and stripping out unnecessary or repetitive tasks.

Together, these processes resulted in faster rendering of web pages. Google also optimized its text engine to reduce loading times, improving your browsing experience. These steps, Google says, have led to the browser being “meaningfully faster” for users.