There is no browser as fast as chrome anywhere for javascript, not even safari, not by a factor of 2x. The "omnibar" in chrome is a legitimate innovation, every browser should work that way in my opinion (it's not too difficult to tell the difference between a search string and a url automatically). How many browsers implement web-sockets? Hrm, not too many. The Chrome dev team's amazing pace of development has been spent in the last year putting together a solid, full-featured browser (extension support is almost there, that's the only real lacking element), it looks like they will continue that pace into implementing state-of-the-art features (like web-sockets) before anyone else.