When comparing Google Chrome vs Tor Browser, the Slant community recommends Tor Browser for most people. In the question“What are the best desktop web browsers?” Tor Browser is ranked 1st while Google Chrome is ranked 21st. The most important reason people chose Tor Browser is:
If you follow their instructions religiously, Tor is the nec plus ultra in terms of safety and privacy. For the time being at least.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Excellent HTML 5 feature support
Pro Syncs between devices
By logging into Chrome using a Google account it's possible to sync history, extensions, passwords, bookmarks and other settings between devices. This makes it great for anyone working with multiple devices as it allows experiencing consistent context when in the browser.
Pro Simple user interface
For example, the address bar is also the search bar. Google calls it Omnibox.
Pro Great built-in developer tools
Chrome comes with built-in developer tools, making testing and enhancing web pages simpler for those of us involved in working with such technologies. As well as being beneficial to developers, this also has some benefit to non-technical users; in that by making testing simpler for developers those developers are more likely to use Chrome for their tests, and can spend more time making improvements over investigating underlying causes of issues.
Pro Plenty of extensions
There are far more available on this browser than any other, and that may matter for some.
Pro Good performance
According to TopTen Reviews, Chrome is currently one of the best performing browsers for initial (cold) startup, average startup, and navigation times. Works very well with the uBlock Origin adblocker.
Pro Automatically updates
Chrome updates in the background ensuring you're always on the latest version. This makes it much more likely that sites will work on your browser, since (almost) all Chrome users will be running exactly the same version.
Pro Multiple account login
You can have multiple Chromes with different accounts logged at the same time. And it is really easy to manage different accounts.
Pro Works great with many extensions
Unlike Firefox, Google Chrome can keep its fast performance regardless of how many extensions are installed. With more than 10 extensions Firefox gets slower and slower in a geometric progression rate. Google Chrome doesn't care how many extensions the user has installed - 3 or 133 it still performs great.
Pro Customizable by user
Each of the managed users can have their own configuration (themes, extensions, ...)
Pro Can translate text directly
Pro Uses Blink
It uses the blink rendering engine which has removed many legacy khtml/webkit code to be much lighter and faster.
Pro Only one distributor
Unlike those various unofficial Chromium builds, there is only one distributor, so all Chrome releases follow the same standards.
Pro Sandboxed Tabs
Every tab runs as their own process, so if one crashes or becomes unresponsive, the whole browser isn't affected.
Pro Chrome is faster than Firefox
Pro Simple interface
Pro Data collection
Chrome uses online services to collect our data and improve our browser experience. But this also means it spies on you.
Pro Engine is open-source
Chromium is open source, except the proprietary media codecs like AAC, H.264, MP3 and Adobe Flash, that can't be legally open-sourced.
Pro Popular
As of March 2015, Chrome is the most popular browser on the internet, with a 43.9% - 63.7% market share, Its rendering engine Blink is also the most used rendering engine and used in many products including: Opera, Vivaldi, Qt, Brave, Steam or Electron meaning most developers will be testing their sites against this browser to ensure compatibility.
Pro Backed and supported by Google
Whilst Chrome is based on the open source browser Chromium, Google reviews this code and build on top of it. This means it takes (and contributes to) a number of the benefits of the open source model whilst having the resources, support and investment of a major company.
Pro Plays more media formats than any open source browser
Includes support for many licensed unfree media formats.
Pro Multimedia Plugins and Codecs included
Google Chrome comes with its own flashplayer and the most common multimedia codecs so you don't have to worry that they are outdated nor do you need to install them as a third party package.
Pro Tor sets the standard for safe and private browsing
If you follow their instructions religiously, Tor is the nec plus ultra in terms of safety and privacy. For the time being at least.
Pro Access hidden .onion sites
Pro Portable
Can be installed and run on a portable device such as a USB stick.
Pro Free and open source
Pro Uses the Tor network
Pro NoScript and HTTPS Everywhere installed by default
Pro Relatively fast
Pro The only browser package which includes a gateway built-in into TOR, a network where you can actually browse the web completely anonymously
Privacy. It's fundamental. And this browser has enabled and keeps enabling people to lookup things they don't want their ISP/ government or surveillance marketers to see.
And what's better they won't know a thing about what you searched.
What is visible to the outside world however is the fact: you make use of TOR and probably the TORBrowser this client / citizen of ours is using TOR to obfuscate his /her traffic (=~anonymize ).
Pro Safe
Tor is just as safe as Chrome or firefox, as long as you don't visit malicious websites.
Pro Based on Firefox
Firefox is a great browser, and tor is built on it
Pro Open source
Open source builds trust on using the program
Cons
Con Online tracking by default
Chrome allows opting out of tracking by going to Settings > Advanced > Privacy and un-checking any unwanted services. Alternatively Chromium can be used to get a similar browser experience without Google's services on top of it.
Con Huge memory hog
Each tab and extension in the browser uses significant chunks of RAM, giving the browser poor performance on machines without enough RAM to supply.
Con Bad for battery life
Drains battery life on both Windows laptops and Macs much quicker than the alternatives. It can shave hours off the battery life of any non Chromebook laptop.
Con Not fully open-source
While most of Chrome is open source: Chrome does have some closed-source components to make it possible to play some closed media formats.
Con Increasingly slow
When Chrome first came out, it was known for being lightweight and very speedy. Over the years, more and more features have been added to Chrome. Because of this, crashes, errors, and general laggy-ness has increased noticeably.
Con It's Google
Data collection!
Con No mobile extensions
Chrome on Android and iOS does not support extensions.
Con Not as customizable as Firefox or Vivaldi
Con Big target for hackers
Chrome is the most popular browser in the world. That makes it the most targeted browser in the world by hackers.
Con Hard/impossible to transfer passwords to a different machine without uploading them to Google
Con Bad quality control on extensions
Some just plain don't work while a few actually break the browser.
Con Basic
Unlike Brave and Vivaldi which are more stable and have more features, Chrome is pretty basic.
Con Blurred fonts on Windows
Fonts on Windows are blurred, that is especially noticeable in light fonts on dark background. Small italic text is hard to read.
Con No menu bar on Windows
There's no menu bar, except on Mac OS or Linux appmenu.
Con Does not hardware accelerate HTML5 video correctly
Chrome is unable to hardware accelerate HTML5 video correctly which makes playing 4k video on laptops a poor experience filled with lag.
Though there is a workaround for YouTube in that a plugin can be installed to force Flash playback instead of HTML5, which plays smoothly and has no HW acceleration issues. There's another plugin (h264ify) that will force to use the h.264 codec video if available instead of the VP9 one which is the resource hog.
Con No reader view
Unlike most other browsers, Chrome doesn't have a reader view function.
Con American agents may track you
Con Soon to disable AD blocking and create DRM for the web
Con Gives too much weight to Google on the future of the Web
Con Must adapt new browsing habits
It is not recommended to do several things TOR browser that users would want to do in a normal browser, such as visiting social networks and banking.
Con Not made as your daily browser
It does not support many modern features due security and is pretty slow.
Con Extremely slow
Caused by the tor network the browser depends on.
Con You will hang on every recaptcha
Con Not secure
Firefox isn't as secure as Chrome.
Con Tor is very outdated on Firefox code
It's not that it uses the same browser engine, just look at the logos.
Con Dependant on Mozilla
Since it uses gecko.
Con Did not install
Will also not delete either.
Con Does not guarantee perfect anonymity
Unlike what most users would suspect.
Con Using Tor on Android is still not great
Samsumg users will never use it.
Con Open Source
Anyone can hack the source code and insert malware.
Con Too many supporters
Tor has so many supporters such as brave, which makes it more popular. This is another thing how tor will be unsecure.